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The Changing Order 

A Study of Democracy 



BY 



Oscar Lovell Triggs, Ph. D. 



And slowly answered Arthur from the barge: 
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
And God fulfills Himself in many ways, 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 



SERIES I 



1905 

PUBLISHED BY THE 

OSCAR L. TRIGGS PUBLISHING COMPANY 

CHICAGO 



'05~ 









/ 



/a ? 



TO MY ACCOMPLICE. 



NOTE. 

Several of the papers of this volume have appeared 
in the Forum, Sewanee Review, Poet-Lore, Unity, 
Open Court, Independent, Chautauquan, and Crafts- 
man; and to the editors of these magazines I am in- 
debted for permission to reprint in the present form. 

O. L. T. 

Chicago, July, 1905. 




1 



THE WORD DEMOCRACY. 

Underneath all now comes this Word, turning the edge of the 
other words where they meet it. 

Politics, art, science, commerce, religion, customs and methods 
of daily life, the very outer shows and semblances of or- 
dinary objects — 

Their meanings must all now be absorbed and recast in this 
word, or else fall off like dry husks before its disclosure — 

Art can now no longer be separated from life; 

The old canons fail ; her tutelage completed she becomes equivalent 
to Nature, and hangs her curtains continuous with the 
clouds and waterfalls — 

The form of man emerges in all objects, baffling the old classi- 
fications and definitions — 

The old ties giving way beneath the strain, and the great pent 
heart heaving as though it would break — 

At the sound of the new word spoken — 

At the sound of the word Democracy. 

Edward Carpenter in "Towards Democracy." 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Introduction ......... 9 

Democratic Art ........ 15 

The Esoteric Tendency in Literature : Browning . . .52 

Subjective Landscape Art: George Inness ... 78 

The Critical Attitude 87 

An Instance of Conversion : Tolstoi . . . . . 112 

A Type of Transition: William Morris .... 120 

The Philosophy of Play 151 

Democratic Education ....... 169 

" Where Is the Poet ? " ....... 181 

The New Doctrine of Labor ....... 195 

The Sociological Viewpoint in Art ..... 199 

The Philosophy of the Betterment Movement . . . .215 

Industrial Feudalism — and After ..... 223 

The Workshop and School ....... 233 

A School of Industrial Art 249 

The Philosophic and Religious Ground : Walt Whitman . . 262 

The Outlook to the East 279 



INTRODUCTION. 

I am to make constant use of the word democracy 
in the following studies yet I am unable to give it precise 
definition. I understand, however, that the term is indica- 
tive of a new order of ideas. Broadly speaking it repre- 
sents an attitude of mind that is opposed to the monarchic 
and aristocratic. As yet the foundations of the social 
order are largely aristocratic. The new ideas are ob- 
scured and their effects destroyed by the stream of tra- 
ditionary tendency. My purpose, then, is to separate the 
new order from the old, to gather materials for a defini- 
tion from the more subtle fields of distinction, leaving 
the final formulation to those who shall live within the 
new world. I have in view certain phenomena that seem 
to me to be the effects of the new spirit of life which we 
call democracy. Democracy signifies the uprise of the 
people, the "masses," their complete utterance and exer- 
cise in politics, art, education, religion, and all other 
forms of human activity. Probably the first result of 
the denial of the feudal relation was felt in the sphere 
of government. The American Revolutionists discarded 
at the first political inequality which was exemplified in 
arbitrary taxation, though they continued to maintain 
nearly every other feudal condition. Washington might 
well have been proclaimed King at the time of his election 
to the presidency and in the states of the South a genuine 
aristocracy was upheld until the civil war. The principle 



10 INTRODUCTION 

of popular control was, however, acknowledged and in 
Lincoln, the peasant president, the man of common fibre, 
unlettered in the European sense of culture, yet the ac- 
credited prophet of the new social order, truly called by 
Lowell "the First American," the advent of the people 
was fully justified. But to describe democratic polity in 
the sphere of government is no part of my motive. I have 
in mind the more subtle effects of democracy, its radiation 
in art, industry, education, and religion. Now one of the 
new ideas is the doctrine of labor as distinguished from 
the aristocratic doctrine of leisure. "Blessed is he who 
has found his work" spoke out Carlyle. But what is the 
nature of that work from which the ancient curse has 
been removed — work which is a tangible blessing in 
itself, a pleasure even as sleep and food ? In truth a new 
industrialism is forming. Moreover a new sense of life 
itself is shaping among those whose perceptions are not 
obscured by power and luxury and a Maeterlinck is born 
to become the prophet of the humble. "There are about 
us," says Maeterlinck, in one of his recent essays, "thous- 
ands of poor creatures who have nothing of beauty in their 
lives; they come and go in obscurity, and we believe all 
is dead within them ; and no one pays any heed. And then 
one day a simple word, an unexpected silence, a little 
tear that springs from the source of beauty itself, tells 
us they have found the means of raising aloft, in the 
shadow of their soul, an ideal a thousand times more 
beautiful than the most beautiful things their ears have 
ever heard or their eyes ever seen. O, noble and pallid 
ideals of silence and shadow! It is you, above all, who 
soar direct to God!" Where this thing is true, where 
the speech inclines to silence, where life is esoteric, of 



INTRODUCTION 11 

what avail is the old ideal of external authority? A 
marked transformation is taking place likewise in the field 
of art, both in respect of theory and of subject matter. Tol- 
stoi would define art in terms of experience and William 
Morris in terms of pleasurable activity. "One day," 
Morris said, "we shall win back art to our daily labor: 
win back art, that is to say, the pleasure of life, to the 
people." And that was a profound saying of his when 
denied the laureateship at Tennyson's death: "If I can't 
be the laureate of writing men, I'll be the laureate of 
sweating men." So the people are finding inclusion in 
the books. One recalls now with a new sense of their 
significance the innovations begun by Euripides in the 
direction of the realistic drama, the new spirit of Chaucer 
who gave the miller and plowman a place among his 
pilgrims, the greatheartedness of Burns who sang the 
glories of the home and field, the wide sympathies of 
Wordsworth who depicted with all sincerity the dignity 
of the commonplace. For these are among the historic 
tokens of democracy. Changes, springing from the 
same impulses are taking place in education. Nearly every 
school building is the arena today of a conflict between 
the old and the new. Every teacher and pupil feels, in 
some degree, the turmoil of transition. The ideal of a 
special culture is yielding. The scholar, once revered as 
holding the keys of that knowledge which was power, is 
losing place and function — receding into the past like the 
vanishing forms of nobles and priests. But life is becom- 
ing itself educative. Schools are being established with 
methods based on the principle of self-government. And 
for the discipline of the intellect there is being substituted 
the culture of personality. So into all realms of thought 



12 INTRODUCTION 

the spirit of democracy is penetrating. Religion is per- 
haps the last to suffer change. For long ages the Chris- 
tian world has been taught to observe the judgments that 
arise within the "Kingdom of God" — how God is a king, 
who has established a kingdom, who compels service upon 
subjects whose duty is to obey. But these conceptions, 
king, kingdom, subject, duty, obedience, find little re- 
sponse among men who as to all other affairs are living 
in federation and under republican forms. And at length 
prophets are arising upon whose lips the word king is 
never heard, and in whose minds the conception of king- 
ship is never formed — prophets, that is, of cosmic democ- 
racy. The doctrine of immortality was once aristocratic ; 
it is now inclusive and democratic. These, then, are the 
type of phenomena that I have in mind to describe. It 
should be understood that from the very nature of the 
subject the discussion can not always be elaborated but 
must be conducted largely by the method of suggestion. 

II. 

Nothing betrays the force of tradition more than the 
persistency with which democracy in America has been 
construed in terms of a system of politics. Our fore- 
fathers were political revolutionists, and when the prin- 
ciples of free government were formulated and political 
equality was secured for all, it was supposed that the 
citizens of the new republic were safe in their pursuit 
of happiness. The social ground work which the Colon- 
ists actually laid was industrial democracy, which requires 
for its well being not a government of laws, but a co- 
partnership of men. Notwithstanding this condition, 



INTRODUCTION 13 

our national difficulties have been adjusted by political 
instruments, and the deposit of a ballot and the enact- 
ment of a law have been regarded as the chief duty of 
man. What these instruments really recorded were in- 
dustrial changes. The American Revolution was funda- 
mentally a war undertaken for the independency of labor. 
The Civil War was the occasion of a conflict between two 
opposing ideals of life — that attendant upon labor and 
leisure. The principles of representative government 
in the one case, and of state and national sovereignty 
in the other, were secondary matters. Our fathers gained 
certain industrial rights by the one struggle and their 
sons abolished one form of industrial slavery by the 
other. The result of confusing the issues so completely 
has been to place excellent sets of laws upon the statute 
books, but to leave the community in unregulated tur- 
moil. Our actual democracy is crude in the extreme; 
the first lines of relationship proper for an industrial 
community having hardly been drawn, the first principles 
of justice having hardly been considered. As Morris 
once said succinctly: "The industrial situation is bad. 
I wish it would better." 

It is seen that political equality does not mean indus- 
trial equality and that manhood suffrage does not bring 
manly independence. And save for the professional poli- 
ticians no one engages very seriously today in govern- 
ment. We look back upon our political declarations very 
much as we read the XXXIX Articles, or the Book of 
Homilies, surprised at the disputes they occasioned : "As 
certain Anabaptists do falsely boast," "As the Palagians 
do vainly talk" — how little "understanded of the people" 
are these differences now ! The political issues of the so- 



14 INTRODUCTION 

called political parties are equally obsolete and outworn. 
Men belong to parties by tradition, accident, or accord- 
ing to locality, no longer by conviction — because there are 
no longer political questions at issue. The real problems 
of life in America are neither ecclesiastical nor govern- 
mental: they are industrial. What men are struggling 
for today is industrial freedom. We have still to make 
any genuine Declaration of Independence, or to write 
a Constitution adapted to the needs of a non-political 
community. Doubtless it has been well that those who 
were publicly inclined have had the bauble of government 
to play with. They have toyed eloquently with the sur- 
face of things and left the deeper forces opportunity to 
become conscious "and gather for emergence. In the year 
1899 more than fourteen thousand laws were enacted by 
legislative bodies in the United States, not that laws were 
needed, but that legislatures might have occupation. If, 
in the revolution now upon us, our political institutions 
should be greatly changed or even swept away, it would 
not much matter. Administration is practically the only 
vital function left in any state ; for the most part our legis- 
lation is simply for the sake of legislation. If government 
had much significance today, it would point to the vast 
degeneracy of peoples. For, as Tacitus penned, "When 
the state is corrupt then the laws are most multiplied. ,, 
As it is with us today a corrupt government may be the 
sign of a healthy popular condition, an indication of the 
fact that men are attending to the vital issues of life. 
What is needed at this hour is not to establish free govern- 
ment but to develop free men — "not," as William Morris 
once said, "to establish socialism, but to educate socialists." 



DEMOCRATIC ART. 
I. 

Democracy, to repeat, is not merely a political term : it 
is a universal idea, whose entertainment determines _ 1- 
duct in every one of the spheres of human activity It 
will not prove itself established until its principles have 
permeated society in every part. Its function is to bring 
to growth out of the social soil strictly cutocbthonic edu- 
cation, religion, philosophy, and arts, which shall be uni- 
form with progress; corroborating in the fullest degree 
the immediate land and contemporary life. 

The progress of transformation and adjustment which 
the fine arts are undergoing, in passing from an aristo- 
cratic to a democratic basis, is one of the most important 
and significant, though generally unrecognized, move- 
ments of the modern world. Although the subject is 
beset with difficulties, I propose, in this first study, to ex- 
amine with some care the nature and extent of the specific 
changes, compelled in art by the Time-Spirit, in the midst 
of the general results flowing from universal emancipa- 
tion. The movement is, of course, incomplete in its opera- 
tion. The present period is one of transition. An ade- 
quately representative art does not exist today in any 
democratic community, not even in any portion of Amer- 
ica, which is still the most perfect and consistent embodi- 

15 



16 THE CHANGING ORDER 

ment of the democratic idea, and in whose bounds, there- 
fore, we should expect the evidences of artistic freedom. 

If a reason be sought for the insufficiency of American 
art, two facts will be found to have a bearing upon the 
question. One is the commonly recognized truth that 
the actual scenery of the American land and the events 
of its population are themselves transcendent in their po- 
etic quality. As the French Revolution, by transferring the 
drama of life from the stage to the streets, ruined the 
theatres of Paris, so the very variety and intensity of our 
own dramatic life make us content to forego the simu- 
lation of the play and the poem. At the time of the 
Spanish-American war it was complained that the strug- 
gle brought forth no poetry commensurate with the occa- 
sion. But would not the events themselves, brought 
close to us through the medium of the daily press, re- 
corded there vividly and dramatically, render the poetic 
celebration of deeds comparatively uninteresting? This 
is the moment of being and doing. Our "Iliad" is still 
in the making. 

Another fact connects the foregoing with this discus- 
sion, namely, that our art, however potential in its subject- 
quality, is still formed, to a considerable degree, under 
the guidance of the traditions of feudal Europe. To this 
day Paris is the Mecca of painters. The foreign melo- 
drama, false to our notions of heroism, remains the ac- 
cepted model of playwrights, rather than native plays of 
the type of Heme's "Shore Acres" or Thomas's "In 
Mizzoura." Dvorak's "American Symphony" contains 
nothing distinctively American ; Damrosch's "Scarlet Let- 
ter" is Germanic in everything but subject And not only 
is our creative art formed under direction, but the ac- 



DEMOCRATIC ART 17 

cepted principles of criticism are traditional ; and we look 
at even the art that is modern through the eyes of for- 
eign courts. Emerson's "American Scholar" was called 
"the scholar's Declaration of Independence" : that revolu- 
tion is completed. But the declaration of artistic and 
critical independence has yet to be formulated and written. 
It must be understood, therefore, that any conclusion re- 
specting either the descriptive or the speculative phases 
of democratic art and criticism is but tentative. The 
event awaits the completion of the democratic movement. 
Enough, however, has been accomplished, and tendencies 
are clearly enough defined, to enable us to understand, in 
part by speculation, in part by observation, the character- 
istics of democratic art. 

These characteristics may first be formulated by draw- 
ing a contrast between aristocracy and democracy in their 
political and social aspects. As pointed out by Professor 
Santayana, such preliminary scrutiny and definition of 
political distinctions will be found to be valuable because 
of the aesthetic ingredient that all social ideas contain, 
inasmuch as this or that idea is generally entertained on 
account of its appeal to the imagination as well as to the 
reason ; and a final selection of any idea is made as much 
on the grounds of its propriety as of its service. When 
the members of any society prize the political form they 
have achieved as having value in itself, as somewhat in- 
trinsically and eternally right and beautiful, — when, that 
is, the subjects of a king consecrate the law and order of 
their society as something inherently beautiful, and the 
citizens of the republic are pleased to contemplate their 
structureless, but practical, democracy as something di- 
vinely just and righteous, — the social imagination receives 



18 THE CHANGING ORDER 

a coloring that may be called aesthetic; and the artistic 
product, in its turn, is consciously or unconsciously made 
to conform to the general principle. It is historically, 
as philosophically, true that the fine arts correspond, in 
general aspects at least, often in the minutest detail, to 
the modes of thought and feeling that characterize social 
conditions. 

Socially an aristocratic society exhibits three special 
features ; viz., conventionality as to form, exclusiveness as 
to content, conservatism in matters of progress. A dem- 
ocracy, on the other hand, is unconventional, almost 
structureless in its forms, inclusive in its content, pro- 
gressive in its ideals. 

An examination of artistic production with respect to 
form, content, and general attitude toward life and 
thought, in a manner suggested by Professor Dowden and 
John Addington Symonds in their essays upon the sub- 
ject, will give the definition of the two classes of art in 
question. 

In its forms aristocratic art will first be dignified: it 
must wear the dress prescribed by custom, and defer to 
the proprieties that hedge the throne. Composition is 
determined by the standard of "good form," which has 
been established by the critical class, and is maintained 
in force by tradition. Aristocratic art is largely external, 
but perfect within the limits of the "grand manner," 
and fixed in its "classic" perfection by authoritative con- 
ventions. 

As a patrician shuns the vulgar phrase in the interest 
of culture, so it seeks to preserve its refinement by avoid- 
ing the vulgar person. Its art, accordingly, is exclusive 
in its subject-matter; only those characters and themes 



DEMOCRATIC ART 19 

having admission which, by their nobility and dignity, are 
thought to be susceptible of artistic treatment. The pas- 
sions that run from lord to lady inspire the lyric song; 
while "knights' and ladies' gentle deeds" constitute the 
scope of epic or dramatic action. In pastorals shepherds 
and shepherdesses of the field appear; but the dainty 
Corydons and Chloes that play at keeping sheep never 
see a pasture ; and the sheep that play at being kept never 
enter a fold. A really common person may enter upon 
the stage to play buffoonery or point a biting satire, but 
never to maintain an independent interest or destiny. On 
Shakespeare's stage fates were given only to kings and 
nobles. It was doubtless his own amibtion to have 

"A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, 
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene." 

Hen. V. L, 1. 

Toward life aristocracy ever maintains the conserva- 
tive attitude. It exists by gifts of the past. Its power and 
privileges, private and public, are derived by inheritance. 
The will of the father governs the career of the child: 
the experience of age restrains the creative impulses of 
youth. An aristocracy resists the encroachment of new 
ideas : it doubts nothing, desires nothing, holds perma- 
nently to beliefs, is content with metes and bounds. Its 
art pictures in the past the Golden Age. The virtues it 
extols are those that belong to feudalism, loyalty to the 
king, obedience to inherited authority. 

The popularization of art results in forms that are 
fluid and varied, in subjects fully comprehensive in their 
scope, in ideals that freely enlarge and advance. The 
one word comprehending these features, the word which 



20 THE CHANGING ORDER 

justifies the use of the term "democratic" in characteriz- 
ing them, is "freedom" — the freedom to choose without 
restraint forms and subjects, making possible a sincere 
expression of personality, which is the fundamental con- 
tent of all true art ; the freedom to experiment and proph- 
esy, rendering easy a progression to higher and sincerer 
modes of expression. 

As the leading principle of a democracy is individual- 
ism, the art that arises from among the people has for its 
chief characteristic infinite variety of form. The one 
effort of democratic art being to exploit individuals, di- 
verse from each other, the modes of utterance change to 
correspond to the nature of the man. Every artist be- 
comes a law unto himself, and learns to follow an impres- 
sionistic method to the full license of egotism. The ac- 
ceptance of all the facts of life involves a primitive direct- 
ness of method in exhibiting such facts. All true realism 
contains the personal quality, the individualization of sight 
and interpretation. Styles, therefore, in realistic art, are 
simple, fluid, and various. Instead of a single standard 
of established "good form," a hundred plebian modes of 
significance arise. The canon of order in variety is sup- 
planted by that of significance with variety. The symmet- 
rical unity of aristocratic art gives place to multiple mean- 
ing. 

Now, irregularity of form is the very genius of an art 
that is controlled by an inner principle. Ruskin said of a 
Gothic building : "If one part always answers to another 
part, it is sure to be a bad building ; and the greater and 
more conspicuous the irregularities, the greater the 
chances are that it is a good one." Imperfections of form 
in painting, discordant notes in music, vulgar phrases in 



DEMOCRATIC ART 21 

poetry, are artistically permissible so long as these are 
significant of character. Individual sincerity governs 
manner, rather than the conventions of a dictatorial ar- 
tistic class. 

A second great principle of democracy is equality. 
Equality opposes comprehensiveness to exclusiveness. 
Democratic philosophy asserts that the most common sub- 
jects of nature, and the most common events of life, are 
instinct with latent principles which, when detected, ap- 
prove themselves divine. So long as the all-inclusive light 
falls round the objects of the universe, so long will love 
and sympathy comprehend the divinity that appears uni- 
versally in objects. Nothing in man or in nature is un- 
poetical, if treated sincerely by a poet who has the large- 
ness and the insight to penetrate below externals to the 
heart and essence of things. There is nothing profane 
save profane eyes and minds. The acceptance of the uni- 
versal and unseen is rendered imperative ; for only, I be- 
lieve, by the transcendent idea can each fact and person 
be given place and significance in the scheme of the 
world. The democratic principle springs from faith — a 
faith becoming more and more absolute as man rises in 
the scale of being. In every individual the prophetic eye 
perceives the revelation in outlines, however dim, of gods 
and heroes. By virtue of faith the note of popular art is 
inclusiveness. Love casts out scorn and denial. High 
life and low life contribute their characteristic themes. 

Goethe defined good society as that which furnished no 
materials for poetry; and Mr. Symonds says: "How 
hardly shall they who wear evening clothes and ball 
dresses enter into the kingdom of art." But democratic 
art does not exclude good society. Society, bending and 



22 THE CHANGING ORDER 

gliding at the dance, has a specific note of grace no less to 
be admired and cherished than that attending the superb 
poise of the reaper as he swings his sickle, or the strong 
flex of the blacksmith's muscles as he strikes the glowing 
iron. The older themes of aristocracy are not to be neg- 
lected. Why should they be? Heroism remains heroic 
still. The youth of a Western village may hearken to 
the shout of Achilles as it rings out on the plains of Troy ; 
he may shudder at the heroic suffering of Prometheus 
undergoing chastening like a god; he may spring up at 
the sound of Roland's or Oliver's trumpet to recover a 
lost field ; but while not failing to recognize the noble hero- 
ism of god-like action, he is, as a member of the common 
mass, more concerned about the lovely qualities that attach 
to all human life. The hero at the plow or the forge, the 
heroine at the loom or in the kitchen, may be dignified be- 
yond our means of expressing by patiently enduring the 
edicts of fate, and by suffering with hardihood all tragic 
woe. "Lads a-hold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder 
ropes no less to me," said the bard of democracy, "than the 
gods of the antique wars." "We owe to genius," says Em- 
erson, "always the same debt of lifting the curtain of the 
common, and showing us that divinities are sitting in the 
seeming gang of gypsies and peddlers." 

It is a feature of democracy that it looks to the future 
for its justification. As yet the social ideal of democracy 
is unrealized. The New World is destined to vast growths 
and unparalleled achievements. Whitman announces for 
America "splendors and majesties to make all previous 
politics of the earth insignificant." He apostrophizes the 
New World in his most optimistic strain : 
"Thou mental, moral orb — thou New, indeed new, Spiritual World! 



DEMOCRATIC ART 23 

The Present holds thee not — for such vast growth as thine, 
For such unparallel'd flight as thine, such brood as thine, 
The Future only holds thee and can hold thee." 

Bold in this promise, the pioneer of progress, accepting 
what accrues to him from the past not as an obligation, 
but as a free inheritance, moves gladly forward toward an 
ideal goal ; believing he is marching toward something 
great and fortunate. The Golden Age lies somewhere in 
the twentieth century — always beyond, a "Flying Per- 
fect." The poet is given to celebrate not the advance 
that has been made, but the progress that shall be ; and if 
he look to the past at all, it is to gain ground for 
prophecy. Shelley, despairing over the past, restless in 
the present, constructing an ideal world in a far-distant 
future, fully incarnated the democratic spirit. William 
Morris, though he dreamt of the past, yet had eyes ever 
fixed on ideal landscapes, ideal social systems, ideal fel- 
lowships. With characteristic optimism, Whitman an- 
nounced : "All that the past was not the future will be ;" 
and to that future the poet trusted his ideas, never doubt- 
ing that an audience would be raised up to justify him. 
Such usage is significant of democratic procedure. "Noth- 
ing conceivable," said De Tocqueville, "is so petty, so in- 
sipid, so crowded with petty interests, in one word so un- 
poetic, as the life of a man in the United States; but 
amongst the thoughts it suggests there is always one 
which is full of poetry, and this is the hidden nerve which 
gives vigor to the whole frame." This thought, so vital 
and poetic, De Tocqueville goes on to say, is the perfecti- 
bility of human nature. To each in some degree comes 
the splendid vision of the not distant future when person- 
al independence, good-will, charity, comradeship, shall be 



24 THE CHANGING ORDER 

the rule and practice, the joy and independence of the 
race. The attitude of hope and expectancy encourages the 
formulation of new ideals, and experimentation with re- 
spect to new art forms. 

Aristocratic art is typical : it lays aside the common atr 
tributes and seeks the type-forms. Democratic art is indi- 
vidual and real : it accepts the personal view, and invests 
common attributes with meaning. The one gives unity to 
the beautiful ; the other expands and diversifies it. The 
one, being reminiscent, is static ; the other, being prospect- 
ive, is dynamic. The one harmonizes what is given: the 
other suggests what is to be. The note of the one is de- 
spair: that of the other is triumph and joy. The one 
is bound : the other is free. 



II. 



All the fine arts, with the exception perhaps of sculp- 
ture, which has never undergone romantic revival, might 
be drawn upon to illustrate the various effects of the 
democratization of art. Architecture was the first of the 
arts to be popularized. We should expect such an event, 
inasmuch as architecture is the most intimate of the arts, 
the most closely related to our daily life ; for though we 
may not be able to write a poem, or to paint, we are most 
of us called upon at some time to build something, a home 
at least. As a matter of fact, architecture, up to the 
time of the invention of printing, was the chief register 
of human thought; and its forms corresponded most 
closely with the dominant ideas of history. The whole 
series of structural changes which freedom accomplishes 
is exhibited in the history of architecture from the time of 



DEMOCRATIC ART 25 

the Hindu and Egyptian temples, the forms of which 
answered to the conditions of a theocracy, to the period 
of the Middle Ages, when the Gothic cathedral took shape 
under conditions of greater freedom. 

The general character of ancient architecture is immo- 
bility. Conventionality covered the temples like another 
petrifaction. Primitive types were consecrated to the em- 
bodiment of a fixed and most rigorous dogma. Tradition- 
al lines were retained from century to century without 
variation. As the stone embodied an obscure symbolism, 
the interpretation of a special priestly class was required, 
the directive functions of whom have been performed by 
the critics of culture and good taste in every aristocratic 
age. Victor Hugo, in the Fifth Book of his "Notre 
Dame," relates the story of the escape of the mediaeval 
cathedral from the authoritative absolutism of the priest, 
and how, for the first time since the Greek, the religious 
temple fell into the hands of the artist, and became the 
property of the imagination, of poetry, of the people. 
Thought, it appears, was free in the Middle Ages in the 
one direction of architecture. The modern freedom of the 
press is scarcely greater. The creative genius of the peo- 
ple, repressed from political and social activity by feudal- 
ism, and from religious constructiveness by ecclesiastical 
absolutism, emerged in the one way left open — the way of 
architecture. The cathedral of Roman and Byzantine tra- 
ditions furnished the conventional ground ; but, when the 
mobility and spiritual expressiveness of stone were once 
discovered, forms tractable to thought and capable of in- 
finite variation were rapidly developed. If a genius was 
born he became a builder. The other arts, being more 
restricted in their expressiveness, were subordinated to 



20 THE CHANGING ORDER 

this one achievement. Architecture became a co-operative 
art, the art of the arts, the art of the whole people. The 
sculptor must fill the niches and cap the pinnacles with 
appropriate figures; the painter must decorate the walls 
with scenic frescoes, and design forms and select colors 
for the windows ; the musician must raise the lofty organ 
to complete the mystery of vaulted roof with vanishing 
sound ; the poet must exercise his genius in the composi- 
tion of canticle and responsions. A sublime unity of the 
arts was thus accomplished to enhance the glory of the 
one free art. 

The effect of the popularization of architecture may be 
seen in the very enthusiasm for structure that was engen- 
dered in the free cities of Europe. During the period of 
emancipatory process so many cathedrals arose in every 
part of Christendom, that we can hardly believe the report 
of their number. With invention unhindered, rapid and 
innumerable changes took place in styles. In three cen- 
turies the aspect of the standard cathedral was completely 
transformed. Upon the nature of the changes, William 
Morris, in his essay on "Gothic Architecture," makes the 

following comment : 

"If some abbot or monk of the eleventh century could have been 
brought back to his rebuilt church of the thirteenth, he might 
almost have thought some miracle had taken place: the huge 
cylindrical or square piers transformed into clusters of slim, 
elegant shafts; the narrow, round-headed windows supplanted by 
tall, wide lancets, elegantly glazed with pattern and subject; the 
bold vault spanning the wide nave instead of the flat wooden ceil- 
ing of past days; the extreme richness of the mouldings with 
which every member is treated; the elegance and order of the 
floral sculpture, the grace and good drawing of the imagery." 
(Pp. 38, 39.) 

Free creation thus resulted in every improvement. 



DEMOCRATIC ART 27 

Though a logical style was finally developed, there was 
not at any time a fixity of form. Throughout the period 
of growth the use was granted of material of any kind, 
arches of any span or altitude, pillars of any degree of 
strength or tenuity, windows of any size or shape, and 
details of any amount of elaboration. Says Morris : 

"Slim elegance the Gothic could produce, or sturdy solidity, as 
its moods went. Material was not its master, but its servant; 
marble was not necessary to its beauty; stone would do, or brick, 
or timber. In default of carving, it would set together cubes of 
glass or whatsoever was shining and fair-hued, and cover every 
portion of its interiors with a fairy coat of splendor; or would 
mould mere plaster into intricacy of work scarce to be followed, 
but never wearying the eyes with its delicacy and expressiveness 
of line. Smoothness it loves, the utmost finish that the hand 
can give; but if material or skill fail, the rougher work shall so 
be wrought that it also shall please us with its inventive sug- 
gestion. For the iron rule of the classical period, the acknowledged 
slavery of everyone but the great man, was gone, and freedom 
had taken its place." (Id., pp. 32, 33.) 

With increasing license the priestly symbolism was 
modified; and a meaning foreign to religion would be 
embodied in a door, or a facade, sometimes in an entire 
church. As Victor Hugo remarks in "Notre Dame :' 



.rt 



"No idea can be given of the liberties taken by architects. We 
find capitals interwoven with monks and nuns in shameful atti- 
tudes, as in the Salle des Cheminees of the Palace of Justice at 
Paris; we find Noah's adventures carved at full length, as under 
the great porch at Bourges; or we find a tipsy monk, with the 
ears of an ass and a glass in his hand, laughing in the face of 
an entire community, as in the lavatory of the Abbey of Bocher- 
ville. Sometimes a doorway, a facade, an entire church, offers 
a symbolic meaning hostile to the Church. Guillaume de Paris 
in the thirteenth century, Nicholas Flamel in the fifteenth, wrote 



28 THE CHANGING ORDER 

such seditious pages. Saint Jacques de la Boucherie was a church 
of opposition throughout." (English trans., Sterling edit., pp. 
213, 214.) 

With the restrictions of dogma removed, the interests 
of beauty or significance alone determined the artist's 
plan. 

The secret of the evolution was found in the freedom of 
the workmen. Each builder and mason was at liberty to 
leave some evidence of his own individuality upon the 
materials, some mark of his pleasure in service. The chief 
architect was only the master-workman ; and the masons 
and carvers were architects in their turn ; mingling fancy 
and imagination with their technical skill, and giving to 
each object the vitality of spontaneous design and execu- 
tion. Freedom, in short, was the essential quality of 
Gothic architecture. 

For full three hundred years the development of an 
individualized architecture continued — a bright, creative, 
golden period. When the printing-press was invented 
"the book," as Victor Hugo puts it, "destroyed the build- 
ing." Mind had found other channels for its activity. 
But the Gothic cathedrals accomplished their purpose; 
and they stand to witness forever to the advantages of 
freedom — a promise of democratic art. 

The freedom, originality, variety, and progress that 
marked the making of Gothic architecture are the char- 
acteristics that distinguish the modern structures being 
produced on American and democratic soil. The waves 
of classical renaissance that swept across Europe in ages 
subsequent to the Gothic, leaving in its recession such 
masses of formal, pedantic structures as St. Paul's in 
London and its group of parish churches, — just meant to 



DEMOCRATIC ART 29 

t>e the homes of cultivated, unenthusiastic ecclesiasticism, 
— had but little effect upon the architectural movement of 
the New World. Architecture in America, especially dur- 
ing the last fifty years, is conspicuous by the quantity, 
variety, and originality of native forms, and by the free- 
dom with which the traditional models are employed. The 
leading characteristic is a readiness to strike out new 
paths under the requirement of changing conditions and 
of practical considerations. The principle of individual- 
ity, especially in the newer cities of the West, controls 
domestic structure to the end of multiplying de- 
signs almost infinitely, many of which, it is true, are pain- 
ful and monstrous to classic good taste (the penalty 
democracy pays for its freedom) ; but many more are 
full of artistic beauty and promise. 

Conspicuous secular architecture may be said to con- 
stitute America's contribution to the modern. The epochs 
of popes and kings have passed; and this is no age in 
which to build churches or palaces. Secularism and in- 
dustrial democracy are keys to the present. We build 
libraries, school houses and railroad stations. The com- 
mercial temple, largely the product of the American mind, 
is the exact equivalent of the modern business ideal. The 
daring, strength, Titanic energy, intelligence and majesty 
evidenced in many of the modern business temples in- 
dicate precisely one, and perhaps the dominant, feature 
of American character. These buildings are significant 
in their principles of structure, rather than formal. They 
observe the logic of function. They are not built, that is, 
primarily, to display artistic proportions, but to serve 
a purpose and fulfill a need. The Time-Spirit was their 



30 THE CHANGING ORDER 

architect; necessity was their craftsmaster. In them a 
new group of social conditions found a habitation. 

The growth of population in cities, the centralization of 
business in a "down-town" district, the co-operation of 
men necessitated by economy and despatch, the abundance 
and cheapness of iron and steel, the convenience and ser- 
viceability of steam heat and electric light, the quick 
transportation made possible by the elevator — these eco- 
nomic forces and mechanical devices have combined to 
make such structures as the Masonic Temple in Chicago 
masterpieces of modernity, admirably answering to new 
conditions ; and structures as full of meaning and ideal 
content as any that architectural history records. In dis- 
play of simplicity, in the use of broad surfaces, in control 
of the lines of height, and in the artistic handling of mass, 
the Chicago group of office buildings is unique among the 
architecture of the world. These are proud structures, 
defiant in their altitude, every story soaring and exulting. 
In their pride and altitude their artistic feeling lies. I 
admire the daring, wisdom, and genius of the men who 
designed and erected them. The genius of men like Root 
and Hardenberg marks an epoch in art. They were no 
hawkers of worn-out creeds; neither were they infidel. 
But actuated by a new motive they inaugurated an archi- 
tectural movement that may be said to be the only genu- 
inely new and creative tendency in architecture since the 
completion of the Gothic in the Middle Ages. When to 
the strength of a general idea are added the delicacy and 
refinement of a personal conception, when the strictly ar- 
tistic sentiment is perceived and accentuated, democracy 
may point to its commercial structures with the pride of a 



DEMOCRATIC ART 31 

great achievement. They spring from freedom: in the 
lines of freedom they are elaborated. 

In a few instances, notably in the work of Mr. Louis 
H. Sullivan, the architect of the Auditorium and the 
Schiller theatre at Chicago, I believe the signs of a new 
and enlarged architecture are visible. Mr. Sullivan, more 
than any other builder known to me, founds his works in 
personal character and personal responsibility and perme- 
ates them with poetic feeling. He is the exponent in 
theory and in practice of poetic architecture by which he 
means an architecture that rises freshly out of the heart 
of nature and out of the soul of man, seeking to typify 
the harmoniously interblended rhythms of nature and hu- 
manity in a form characterized by mobile equilibrium or 
static rhythm. In his essay "Objective and Subjective," 
Mr. Sullivan explains his theory : 

"I hold that the architectural art, thus far, has failed to reach 
its highest development, its fullest capability of imagination, of 
thought and expression, because it has not yet found a way to be- 
come truly plastic; it does not yet respond to the poet's touch. 
That it is today the only art for which the multitudinous rhythms 
of outward nature, the manifold fluctuations of man's inner be- 
ing, have no significance, no place. 

That the Greek architecture, unerring as far as it went — 
and it went very far indeed in one direction — was but one radius 
within the field of a possible circle of expression. That, though 
perfect in its eyesight, definite in its desires, clear in its pur- 
pose, it was not resourceful in forms; that it lacked the flexi- 
bility and the humanity to respond to the varied and constantly 
shifting desires of the heart. 

It was a pure, it was a noble art; wherefore we call it classic: 
but, after all, it was an apologetic art; for, while possessing 
serenity, it lacked the divinely human element of mobility. The 
Greeks never caught the secret of the changing of the seasons, 
the orderly and complete sequence of their rhythms within the 



32 THE CHANGING ORDER 

calmly moving year. Nor did this self-same Greek know what 
we now know of Nature's bounty: for music in those days had 
not been born; this lovely friend, approaching man to man, had 
not yet begun to bloom as a rose, to exhale its wondrous perfume. 

That the Gothic architecture, with sombre, ecstatic eye, with its 
thought far above with Christ in the heavens, seeing but little 
here below, feverish and overwrought, taking comfort in garden- 
ing and plant-life, sympathizing deeply with Nature's visible 
forms, evolved a copious and rich variety of incidental expressions, 
but lacked the unitary comprehension, the absolute consciousness 
and mastery of pure form that can come alone of unclouded and 
serene contemplation of perfect repose and peace of mind. 

I believe, in other words, that the Greek knew the statics, the 
Goth the dynamics of the art, but that neither of them suspected 
the mobile equilibrium of it — neither of them divined the movement 
and stability of Nature. Failing in this, both have forever fallen 
short, and must pass away when the true, the Poetic Architecture 
shall arise — that architecture which shall speak with clearness, 
with eloquence, and with warmth of the fulness, the completeness 
of man's intercourse with Nature and with his fellow-men." (Pp. 
12, 13.) 

The completion of a personalized rhythmic architecture, 
the attainment in structure of what Wagner has done in 
music and Whitman in poetry, Mr. Sullivan reserves for 
the builders of his native land. 

The same freedom characterizes the American use of 
traditional forms. By means of association democracy 
must realize its connection with a historic past. Innumer- 
able memories cling to and linger around a Grecian 
column, a Roman arch, a Gothic spire. These forms serve 
as organs of recollection; reminding democracy of its 
historical attachments. In buildings designed in part for 
display, — capitols, churches, libraries, museums, and other 
edifices of a public character, — artistic and purely archi- 
tectural conditions meet the maker; and the forms and 



DEMOCRATIC ART 33 

proportions sanctioned by historical experience may be 
properly employed. 

When traditions are used as servants and not as mas- 
ters, when they are permitted to suggest and not allowed 
to command, the architecture resulting from such combin- 
ation of tradition and free creation may still be classed 
as democratic. In cases where a style was adopted arbi- 
trarily, and rigidly applied, as often by Bullfinch and the 
earlier architects, the freedom of creation had no part in 
it ; a dead past had been continued into the living present ; 
the artist was a slave to tradition and not a freeman. But 
the Italianism of the Boston Public Library, the Roman- 
esque features of Trinity Church, Boston, the Florentine 
traditions in the Capitol at Washington, the Gothicism 
of the halls of the University of Chicago, the classicism 
of the World's Fair buildings, serve their proper and pro- 
portionate function by perpetuating historic experience 
and by displaying cultural association, while they leave 
the buildings free to modern and American uses. 

Of what a free adaptation of traditional styles may ac- 
complish, to the end of forming an architecture whicK 
is yet modern and almost worth the name of an original 
American style, the work of Henry Richardson furnishes 
an illustration. Mr. Richardson's characteristic produc- 
tions are the Trinity Church at Boston and the Wynn 
Memorial Library. Freely employing an ancient mode 
Richardson was bold to carry tradition forward in the 
direction of national and personal aspirations. He pro- 
duced a style simple, intellectual, and massive, one in 
perfect harmony with the virile, serious civilization of the 
Puritan. More significant, too, were certain buildings 
in the World's Fair group at Chicago. For the group 



34 THE CHANGING ORDER 

as a whole the traditional classic style was adopted, — 
probably from fear and distrust, — and to this rigid form 
every architect was required to restrain his exuberance 
and trim his fancy. For the purposes of a Fair the classic 
style is altogether irrational. A Fair gives occasion for a 
holiday; it is lyric in its motive and suggestiveness, and 
fancy and individual creativeness come rightly into play in 
the builders. At Chicago the rigidity of the style was 
corrected by the environment, the bright skies and gleam- 
ing lake. It was transcended by the free use of ornamen- 
tation and imposing sculpture groups. Its limitations 
were actually overcome in Sullivan's Transportation 
Building and Cobb's Fisheries Building, built of honest 
staff with no pretence of marble and genuinely plastic. 
Both had the individual touch; the Fisheries Building, 
with its stucco of frogs, fishes and snakes, being the one 
attempt at humor among buildings dedicated to a holiday. 
Handling equally free while under the same restrictions 
of style was made by D. H. Perkins in a building de- 
voted to machinery and electricity at the Omaha exposi- 
tion. His arrangement of this was suggested by the use 
of the building and with wires and lamps, rods and cog- 
wheels he made a plastic design, crowning the whole with 
a superb group of five driven lions, symbolizing the mas- 
tery by man of the physical forces of nature. I would 
wish that that mastery could be carried into other ma- 
terials. 



III. 



I have used the history of architecture to illustrate 
the variety of form that follows the popularization of 



DEMOCRATIC ART 35 

art. The other arts may be briefly referred to, in order 
to give examples of the comprehensiveness of subject- 
matter resulting from the deification of nature and man. 

The history of music, from Bach to Wagner, presents 
the features of emancipation with respect to form, and 
also the extension of the scope of music to the inclusion of 
poetical concepts. 

Berlioz, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt and Wagner repre- 
sent the contest between the classical and the romantic, 
the effort, that is, to enlarge the domain of music by 
including the theme and method of poetry and scenic art. 
Two of these musicians, Berlioz and Wagner, were 
active revolutionists in the political as well as the musical 
world. Berlioz won his first musical victory by a cantata 
written while the bullets of revolution were rattling round 
his window and later on in the barricade wielded his 
weapons with the rest of the Parisian mob, while Wag- 
ner was banished from Saxony as a. "politically-dangerous 
individual" and was known as an exponent of anarchy. 
Of very necessity their art was expansive. Berlioz de- 
clared his purpose was not to subvert any of the constitu- 
ent elements of art, but to add to their number. Liszt 
invented modes elastic enough to reproduce poetical con- 
cepts. The tendency was toward expressiveness. The 
significance of Wagner, who may be taken as the repre- 
sentative democrat in music, consists in his effort to re- 
store the relations between life and art — first, by forming 
a drama which should be all-inclusive, expressing the 
vast issues and complex relations of modern life; and, 
second, by composing music which is indifferent to the 
rules of the symphony, but which is dramatic and realistic 



36 THE CHANGING ORDER 

in motive and fully apprehensible by personality and the 
poetic judgment. 

Such a composer, being independent, is limited in his 
display only by the bounds which define the ideas he 
seeks to embody. 

IV. 

Painting has had a similar development; its history 
being marked by a growing individualization of form and 
an increasing inclusiveness of theme. The disabilities 
imposed by the mediaeval church relating to sacred theme 
have long since been overcome, on the one hand by the 
growth of religious skepticism, which resulted in a gener- 
al secularization of life, and on the other hand by increase 
in scientific knowledge, which has cast out fear and 
penalty, and filled the void fixed by romantic theology be~ 
tween man and nature with infinite and lovely forms of 
life. The romantic movement, at the beginning of the 
nineteenth century, freed the painter from the rules and 
pedantries of the academy, which had been no less re- 
strictive than the church. The "Men of 1830" stood for 
sincerity and the personal view in confronting nature. 
Jean Francois Millet carried forward the movement oi 
1830 by adding to the interest of landscape the inspira- 
tion of humanity, and avowed that a peasant was as 
worthy as a king for portraiture. He broke from th< 
slavery of conventional art, and put freely upon canvas 
the actual earth-born man and woman, rude in their 
outline, but vigorous in their action, and who face cour- 
ageously their destiny on the laborious earth. "Beauty," 
said Millet, "is the fit, the appropriate, the serviceable 



DEMOCRATIC ART 37 

character well rendered, an idea well wrought out with 
largeness and simplicity." 

Impressionism, the latest of the emancipatory modes, 
asserts the verity of the personal view and even though 
this method has been carried to extremes and the painter 
rioted in the excesses of egotism, the effects which seem 
oftentimes distorted are still significant as an outcome of 
the democratization of art. 



V. 



The popular art of the present day is literature chiefly 
in the forms of essay and fiction and certain kinds of 
poetry. The romantic movement long ago delivered liter- 
ature from bondage to a special measure or class of sub- 
jects. Any man of letters may avail himself of the 
full freedom of the modern world. If, like Shelley, he 
has a passion for reforming the world, his verses may not 
only be expressive of personality but may seek also to 
inculcate the ideals that inform the present and lead for- 
ward the future. The close association of poetry with 
the regnant ideas and dominating tendencies of the mod- 
ern render its history particularly serviceable to illustrate 
the most important phase of the democratic movement in 
art, the enlargement of subject and especially the inclusion 
of the people in the guise of the "average man," about 
whom more and more the ideals and sympathies of men 
are gathering. Says Edward Carpenter: 

"There was a time when the sympathies and the 
ideals of men gathered round other figures ; 

When the crowned king, or the priests in procession, 
or the knight errant, or the man of letters in 



38 THE CHANGING ORDER 

his study, were the imaginative forms to which 
men clung; 
But now before the easy homely garb and appearance 
of this man as he sweeps past in the evening 
all these others fade and grow dim. They 
come back after all and cling to him." 
And this is one of the slowly unfolding meanings of 
democracy. 

It may not be commonly appreciated how thoroughly 
modern English poetry is permeated by political and social 
ideals. Byron and Shelley were in open rebellion against 
aristocratic usage and were even anarchic in their passion 
to destroy the fabric of civilization. Coleridge and 
Wordsworth reflect in their poetry the enthusiasm for 
liberty that led to the conception of a Pantisocracy in the 
Western world. Swinburne has long been a fervid singer 
of odes to freedom and is known not to be averse to 
political revolution. William Morris during his last years 
turned all his poetic genius to the establishment of positive 
socialism. The cry of Armenia was heard in England 
most clearly by a poet, William Watson, whose words in 
denunciation of the Turk who destroyed and in scorn of 
his own people who permitted the ruin, seem as if they 
must burn the page upon which they are written. Rud- 
yard Kipling is an embodiment of English imperialism. 
A poet like Browning while not political in intent ranges 
the world for his subject like a democrat and enunci- 
ates ideas that may destroy or shape social institutions. 
Even Tennyson, aristocrat as he is at heart, must admit 
that "kind hearts are more than coronets and simple 
faith than Norman blood," reversing thus the standards 
of feudalism. On the part of America, Emerson, though 



DEMOCRATIC ART 39 

he did not go to the war to free the slaves sent forward 
ten thousand men and liberated from the prison-house 
of mind the thought out of which the union of the states 
was formed. The New England poets cried out against 
the wrong of slavery and loyally held up the hands of 
Lincoln in the war for union. Lowell and Whitman 
adopted democracy as a positive philosophy and 
from this point of view gave utterance to the loftiest 
ideals. In poetry, if anywhere, will be found the history 
of the theory of man. 

The contrast of the present with the past in respect 
to the position of the average man is most striking and 
illustrative. By the Greek poets the heroic few were 
honored: of the thousands who sailed the Aegean with 
Agamemnon only a few figures stand out from the 
groups of the Myrmidons. Upon the Greek stage gods 
mingled with men to dignify the hero and the deed. 
Euripides, for the first time, introduced touches of realism 
but his innovations had no chance of being established 
and were not followed up until long afterwards in another 
land. Throughout the Middle Ages the hero continued 
to be the object of poetic celebration. The praise of 
Charlemagne and his peers was sung throughout Europe. 
Knightly adventure formed the theme of the novel. Cer- 
vantes for the first time intermingled with the romance 
of nobility various phases of popular life. The popular 
voice appears also for a time in England in the series of 
ballads which celebrated the deeds of Robin Hood and 
his merry men in Sherwood forest. These free men of 
the woods stood for the rights of the common people 
against the exaction of the rich and noble born and the 
report of their adventures formed a genuine epic of revolt. 



40 THE CHANGING ORDER 

Still much of Robin Hood's popularity was due to the 
fact that he was a mad-cap prince, reputed Earl of 
Huntingdon. The democratic ideals hinted at by Eurip- 
ides did not in reality emerge before Chaucer. It is 
the distinction of Chaucer to have created in his Canter- 
bury Tales characters of flesh and blood with touches of 
local color, not forgetting the miller or the ploughman 
or their environment of mill and field. The company that 
rode to Becket's shrine knew no great separation in 
class, made uniform perhaps by the levelling tendency of 
the Catholic creed. Shakespeare, it must be confessed, is 
generally aristocratic. Not once did the so-called "Lord of 
all the passions" give a fate to a common man or woman. 
Fates were for kings and nobles to feed their vanity. 
Sometimes wisdom is spoken by fools but fools were men 
of privilege in the court and in any case perform a second- 
ary part in the drama, playing buffoonery to relieve the 
tragedy of the great. Spencer ignored the common- 
place, idealized the shepherds of the hill, wrote to inform 
the lives of the ladies at the court of the queen and to 
fashion a "gentleman of noble person in virtuous, brave 
and gentle discipline." Still there is in the sixteenth 
century in chap book and picaresque novel a distinctive 
realism and on the stage a tendency toward the humani- 
zation of art. The moral plays and interludes furnish other 
elements of a popular character. This tendency, however, 
went no further than the stage in England. The Latin 
supremacy entered by way of the universities and through 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was no 
marked democratic manifestation. From the revolt of 
1688 there ran on underground, as it were, the popular 
social movement but it had few superficial evidences until 



DEMOCRATIC ART 41 

the present century. English art of the eighteenth cen- 
tury was decidedly aristocratic. The popular writers ig- 
nore the populace and celebrate the great. The dictator 
of this class, the absolute emperor of their literary lace 
and ruffles — as J. W. Hales puts it — was the poet Pope. 
But some pricks of conscience begin now to disturb 
the century's complacency. In one passage Pope wonders 
whether it is quite right that the great should monopolize 
the poet: 

"Yet all our praises why should lords engross? 
Rise, honest muse, and sing the Man of Ross." 

That a plain man, a man without a title, could be 
thought worthy of record indicates that something of 
the century's exclusiveness is disappearing. Richardson 
in "Pamela," published in 1740, recognized the new order 
by adopting a servant girl for a heroine but he ac- 
knowledged the old order by marrying her to the worth- 
less lord and making her Lady Pamela. In Cowper, sym- 
pathies that comprehend the poor and lowly begin to 
abound; a lowly man himself, "he loved the commonplace 
and took pleasure in his garden and his rabbits and found 
it in his heart to justify the unlovely cucumber vine. It 
was left, however, to the genius of a ploughman, Robert 
Burns, to discover and open forever to poetic use the 
thought and emotion contained in the world of the com- 
mon. The service of Burns in this respect can never be 
overestimated. The cunning genius of poetry might 
still lie unexposed in the laborer's cottage and in the 
open sun-purified field had he not possessed the insight to 
detect and the genius to exploit the dignity of the simple, 
the common, the sublime. He has the immortal distinc- 
tion of being the first real democrat in letters. The new 



42 THE CHANGING ORDER 

spirit is just in evidence in Walter Scott, who, although he 
preferred the aristocracy and attempted at Abbots ford to 
restore the glitter and gold of a feudal past and in his 
writings to set the world in love with dreams and phan- 
toms, was yet wide and generous in his sympathies. It 
is said of him that he spoke to every man as if he were 
his blood relation. 

In the great era of the French Revolution the spirit 
of brotherhood passed permanently into literature. The 
era of Humanity dawned with the ruin of a social aristoc- 
racy. The English revolutionary poets all shared in the 
passion for the restoration of freedom : Byron in a moody 
fiery spirit of tumult and destruction, Keats in a gentle 
mood of longing, Shelley with a passion for the domina- 
tion of Love. More than any other man Wordsworth, 
perhaps, taught the world the duty of catholic affection. 
"O, gentle reader," he exhorted, "you will find a tale in 
everything." It was his great service to display the 
hitherto unrecognized attractions of the commonest cir- 
cumstances, the most ignoble things, the most ordinary 
persons. 

Wordsworth presents the type of poetic feeling preva- 
lent in an era of social revolution. By a further demo- 
cratic advance indicated by the rise of industrialism which 
tends always to substitute an industrial for a political co- 
partnership, an organization of men for a government of 
laws, the people, as the real members of such an organic 
community, have gained a new importance and furnished 
poetry with a significant theme and subject — the theme of 
labor, the heroic character of the average man. The 
writings of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Ruskin, 
Carlyle, Browning and Morris worthily interpret the age 



DEMOCRATIC ART 43 

in its enthusiasm for humanity. There is fine passion 
glowing in Carlyle's words concerning the "toilworn 
craftsman that conquers the earth and makes her man's" : 
"Venerable to me is the hard hand, crooked, coarse; 
wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, inde- 
feasibly royal, as of the sceptre of this planet. Ven- 
erable, too, is the rugged face, all weather tanned, with its 
rude intelligence ; for it is the face of a man living man- 
like. O! but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and 
even because we must pity as well as love thee; hardly 
entreated brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us 
were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou 
wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our 
battles wert so marred. For in thee lay a God-created 
form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it 
stand, with the thick adhesions and defacements of la- 
bour; and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know free- 
dom. Yet toil on, toil on; thou art in thy duty, be out 
of it who may ; thou toilest for the altogether indispens- 
able, for daily bread." 

Carlyle was the prophet of toil, but not the craftsman's 
intimate. The spirit of industrial association becomes 
supreme, for the first time, in contemporary fiction. In 
the novels of George Eliot there are notable and character- 
istic pictures of English social life. The district around 
Nuneaton where George Eliot lived for many years is 
just on the edge of the section where industrialism centers. 
As the traveler passes northward from London, through 
the beautiful feudal county of Warwickshire, the county 
of regal parks and immemorial elms and lordly manor 
houses, the land of chivalric Shakespeare, he enters by 
slow stages a region of more lowly mien and repellent 



44 THE CHANGING ORDER 

features — the Great Black country, a country of mines 
and manufactories, so black and repulsive that the travel- 
er looks back with regret at the stately forms of nobles 
fading at the threshold of the industrial region. From 
glowing furnaces rise a thousand smoke-formed pillars 
which support in air a vast and shifting dome of vapors. 
The sun and the blue sky are obscured. The land, the 
houses, the men are blackened and seem stricken with 
disease. Yet these are the scenes and faces, here the 
ideas working, which George Eliot at Nuneaton and 
the Brontes farther north at Haworth, recognizing their 
real grandeur, made forever interesting. Thus did Eliot 
plead : 

"Paint us an angel if you can, with a floating violet 
robe, and a face paled by the celestial light; paint us yet 
oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face upward and 
opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do 
not impose on us any of the aesthetic rules which shall 
banish from the regions of art these old women, scraping 
carrots with their work-worn hands, these heavy clowns 
taking holiday in a dingy pothouse, these rounded backs 
and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the 
spade and done the rough work of the world — these 
homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their 
rough curs, and their clusters of onions." 

Dickens understood the common people even better. 
The Chimes, Bleak House, and Hard Times exhibit his 
popular sympathies that included the lowest and! even the 
criminal classes. Judging Dickens by the standards of 
the twentieth century, Dr. Leet in Looking Backward 
said : "He overtops all the writers of his age, not because 
his literary genius was highest, but because his great heart 



DEMOCRATIC ART 45 

beat for the poor, because he made the cause of the 
victims of society his own, and devoted his pen to expos- 
ing its cruelties and shams." Thackeray took for his part 
in the democratic movement the exposition of the mean- 
ness and selfishness abounding in the circles of wealth and 
rank. Thackeray's return to reality, from that which is 
external to that which is vital and attached to character, 
constitutes his contribution to the modern. Later English 
fiction is not less marked in its absolute inclusiveness. 
John Watson gives us the reason for the success of his 
short stories that "the people liked to read about the 
doings and sayings of the plain, unsophisticated, every- 
day people, who were still close enough to the heart of 
nature to keep something of the freshness and original- 
ity, rather than to hear about the introspective question- 
ings and narrow discussions of the over-cultivated mem- 
bers of a coterie. ,, 

In other departments of modern English literature, the 
democratic subject-matter is hardly less prominent than 
in fiction. The poets of the century with but few ex- 
ceptions are involved in the movement in some degree 
and the spirit of brotherhood colors largely the writings 
of the leading essayists. Browning is the typical English 
democrat, both in his comprehensive philosophy of love, 
which principle is the universal solvent of human experi- 
ence, and in his actual poetic treatment of life and char- 
acter in which nothing is excluded that is vital and dy- 
namic. I do not mean that Browning touches the com- 
mon people as Burns, but that his works contain demo- 
cratic philosophy and exhibit the democratic method. 
He has gone the whole round of creation, searched the 
world for persons who had been lost or forgotten or 



46 THE CHANGING ORDER 

misunderstood, the Sordellos, Pompilias, Fifines, Para- 
celsuses, Grammarians, pointed out that love is under- 
lying all of these, and for each personality found an in- 
dividual voice and style. 

In America where democracy is so largely industrial 
and conditioned by free labor it is natural to expect a 
literature when most native most replete with the mode 
of democracy. Democracy with us is not a mere literary 
theme but is our life, our habit of thought, the condition 
from which we take departure in action. Emerson, 
Thoreau, Lowell, and Whitman are American products, 
impossible in any other than modern soil. Their whole 
work takes meaning from the social environment, as they 
are related to the democratic age. Emerson and Thoreau 
each in his own way displayed the theory of the inde- 
pendent self-centered man. Lowell with scholastic in- 
sight and precision declared the meaning of democracy 
as the life that is separate, self-poised and sole as stars, 
yet linked by love, made one as light. Whitman, uniting 
in his personality the results of historical process, pre- 
sents himself as a typical, complete personality, the first 
unconditioned absolutely sovereign, average man. The 
theme of literature in America, taken in its entirety, re- 
volves about the individualized personality, which is seen 
not to be simple but to have relations and identities with 
every other personality, with nature and the Divine Spirit. 
The sublimation of the thought of identity is expressed 
in Whitman's lines: 

"Ah, little recks the laborer 

How near his work is holding him to God, 
The loving laborer through space and time." 

In this essay I have quoted several times from Whit- 



DEMOCRATIC ART 4 

man. If one poet alone is sought who is fully representa- 
tive of humanity, of democracy, the modern and the New 
World, whose works exhibit in every aspect the features 
of democratic art, its sincerity, universality, and idealistic 
tendency, Whitman certainly would be chosen. Indeed, 
without the illustration of Whitman's poems which indi- 
cate the direction of the wind of the human spirit more 
truly than any other collection of recent production this 
essay could hardly have been written. "Through me," 
the poet affirms, "the afflatus surging and surging, 
through me the current and index." With perfect free- 
dom he ignored the conventionalism of form and consti- 
tuted a line and rhythm that would most adequately convey 
his content. For subjects he ranged the whole subject- 
ive and objective world, saying to every person or thing: 
"Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you." lie 
said, "I have made my poetry out of actual, practical life, 
such as is common to every man or woman, so that all 
have an equal share in it. The old poets went on the 
assumption that there was a selection needed. I make 
little or no selection, put in common things, tools, trades, 
all that can happen or belong to mechanics, farmers, or 
the practical community. I have not put in the language 
of politics but I have put in its spirit ; and in science, by 
intention, at least, the most advanced points are perpetual- 
ly recognized and allowed for." His ideals include also 
the most advanced philosophy and religious opinions. 
In every way he is the most conspicuous artistic identity 
of the age. Beyond all others he is the poet of joy. 
His exultation mounts high and soars wide. His faith 
is so absolute, his confidence in the goodwill of the 
World-Spirit and of each individual soul so great, that 



48 THE CHANGING ORDER 

no imperfection in the world order, no evil in the social 
system, no meanness in the individual, is sufficient to 
check the play of an optimism that is all inclusive and 
boundless as light. To the future and to the Invisible 
World he dedicated his poems. 



VI. 



As th* stream of tendency toward democracy cannot be 
turned back nor permanently checked, it must be con- 
cluded that along the lines of freedom art will continue to 
advance until every subject shall be included, and every 
thought shall find its appropriate form. 

It is likely that there are those who are not in sympathy 
with these tendencies, who resent the destruction of an- 
cient idols, and who maintain that these innovations in- 
dicate the decline and decay of art. The fear of timid 
souls is well expressed by Lowell in "The Cathedral." 
"Lo, where his coming looms, 
Of Earth's anarchic children latest born, 
Democracy, a Titan who hath learned 
To laugh at Jove's old fashioned thunderbolts — 
Could he not also forge them, if he would? 
He, better skilled, with solvents merciless, 
Loosened in air and borne on every wind, 
Saps unperceived: the calm Olympian height 
Of ancient order feels its bases yield, 
And pale gods glance for help to gods as pale. 
What will be left of good or worshipful, 
Of spiritual secrets, mysteries, 
Of fair religion's guarded heritage, 
Heirlooms of soul, passed downward unprofaned 
From eldest Ind? This Western giant coarse, 
Scorning refinements which he lacks himself, 



DEMOCRATIC ART 49 

Loves not nor heeds the ancestral hierarchies, 

Each rank dependent on the next above 

In orderly gradation fixed as fate. 

King by mere manhood, nor allowing aught 

Of holier unction than the sweat of toil; 

In his own strength sufficient; called to solve, 

On the rough edges of society, 

Problems long sacred to the choicer few 

And improvise what elsewhere men receive 

As gifts of deity; tough foundling reared 

Where every man's his own Melchisedek, 

How make him reverent of a King of kings? 

Or Judge self-made, executor of laws 

By him not first discussed and voted on? 

For him no tree of knowledge is forbid, 

Or sweeter if forbid. How save the ark 

Or holy of holies, unprofaned a day 

From his unscrupulous curiosity 

That handles everything as if to buy, 

Tossing aside what fabrics delicate 

Suit not the rough-and-tumble of his ways? 

What hope for those fine-nerved humanities 

That made earth gracious once with gentler arts, 

Now the rude hands have caught the trick of thought 

And claim an equal suffrage with the brain?" 

The lament is to be expected. The heading of one of 
the chapters of "The Dream of John Ball" is the common- 
place truth: "Hard it is for the Old World to see the 
New." But the changes I have described cannot well 
be avoided. Metamorphosis is the law of all living things. 
This is not a matter of what an artistic or academic class 
wants. It is what the people can be prevailed upon to 
give. I do not want an art of scholars, but one of men. 
Art must descend from academic technicalities and be- 
come commonplace: in the words of Mr. Schreiber, "it 
must be reinstated as a natural exponent of our common 



50 THE CHANGING ORDER 

culture." Art must be reclaimed for men, the masses. 
Otherwise it will become abnormal, degenerate into petti- 
ness, and forsake the walks of common truth. Shame to 
us that stigma should attach to work that is close to 
the universal heart and mind, and praise be accorded to 
what is rare and exotic and refined. Beauty is wherever 
light is — the most common thing in the universe. Rus- 
kin declined to interest himself in America because there 
were no castles here, nor ruins — is beauty limited to where 
castles are ? Castles, me thinks, were built by men. Time, 
that wrought the present ruin of past buildings, will 
make future ruins of present buildings. But who wants 
an art based upon ruins? Who will consent to be ruled 
by a dead hand ? Is it not better to free the creative ener- 
gies in the present? "Faith and wonder and the primal 
earth," said Lowell, "are born into the world with every 
child." 

To my mind, the popularization of art — the rendering 
of form and color and theme characteristic and common- 
place — marks a real advance. I will not admit for a 
moment that the triumph of democracy means the wane 
of art. Indeed, before the modern artist lies a more ar- 
duous task than any yet attempted. In approaching the 
people with sympathetic knowledge the danger is not that 
the artist's standards will be abased, but rather that his 
thought and skill will not be sufficient to express the 
real dignity of the people. It is not so easy to 
"Give to barrows, trays, and pans 
Grace and glitter of romance." 

My feeling is that the opportunities of modern and 
American art are great and beyond compare. Almost for 
the first time in history the artist is a freeman. Obsolete 



DEMOCRATIC ART 51 

obstructions are fully cleared. He is independent of any 
ecclesiastical or aristocratic authority. He is delivered 
from a scholastic tradition regarding style and subject. 
He shares in the emancipation of the individual brought 
about by social movements, and in the freedom of the intel- 
lect caused by modern science. He may face the whole of 
nature and the whole of humanity. It is his privilege to 
create the styles adequate to a great people and land. 
It is his opportunity to begin the epic of the modern 
world, — the world as modernly known, — the world of 
Titanic forces taking birth. It is his mission to open for 
the imagination the universe as scientifically disclosed. 
It is his fortune to be able to set forth in all its nobility 
and grandeur the democratic idea, — the idea of self- 
sovereignty and of sovereign association, the idea of a 
life self-poised and sole as stars, yet one as light. 
If art falls short of its present possibilities, the fault is 
not with the materials: it does not lie in any want of 
freedom, but rests rather with the artist who lacks the 
eyes to see, the mind to think, the skill to compose. 

Yet again the fault shall not be alone with the artist, 
but with the people : art is the answer to a need felt in the 
popular heart. The people create: they furnish life for 
art's impulse, freedom for its atmosphere, patronage for 
its support. From them alone can come the impulse that 
shall hasten the production of a genuine democratic 
art. 



THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE: 

BROWNING. 

I. 

The physical energy of the modern world seems to 
be expended in the acquirement of some external gain: 
material possessions, comforts and conveniences. At 
the same time the tendency of life, as disclosed in the 
more significant modes of art — which is life moulded 
nearer to the heart's desire — is in the direction of the 
esoteric. While the nations of the earth are struggling 
to gain or to retain markets, the art of the day is seek- 
ing to satisfy some desire of the heart, some longing of 
the soul. 

By an esoteric art I mean an art whose visible forms 
are determined not by external but by psychic neces- 
sity. The art of a Greek temple is exoteric — it is an art 
whose aesthetic effects arise from form. Its materials 
are arranged with reference to external order. The 
law of visible proportions is inviolable. Its bases, 
columns, entablature and roof have logical and struc- 
tural meaning. It is an art that is intellectual, pre- 
cise, and without mysticism. Christianity released 
an immense emotionalism and with the consequent 
increase in mystic feeling, the formal orders of the 
Greek were broken up. In the course of the middle 
ages, in the period called Gothic, there were built over 
the face of Europe, in the lands where Christian ideal- 



THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE S3 

ism was nurtured, structures that did not arise from 
the ground as form but descended, as it were, from 
the heaven as idea. These majestic temples seem to 
defy all structural laws — they seem not to rest upon 
the ground so much as hover over it — as if gravi- 
tation had been reversed, or as if they were suspended 
from some superior altitude. They are symbols of 
idea. I see in them not material form or laws of pro- 
portion, but multiple ideas. The materials vanish and 
one is face to face with living men — with the great 
mediaeval mystics, whose eyes pierced through form to 
psychic realities. Mind unifies the structure. It is 
genuine esoteric art. Exoteric art may be described 
as manipulation of materials to the end of form; eso- 
teric art as the essential expression of the soul. 

The proof of the esoteric tendency in art as a whole 
is discoverable in the phenomena of modern music 
and poetry. Architecture is more esoteric than at 
first appears ; for when a builder inserts a window into 
a dwelling house according as the house needs the 
light of a window rather than as the exterior needs 
a harmony, or when he gathers his steel frame and 
terra cotta envelope about a man in an office instead 
of bringing columns from Greece and proportions from 
Rome to please the man in the street, he is employing 
the esoteric mode of structure. Such building fol- 
lows the logic of function. Probably, however, the 
fullest freedom of man is found in those arts which 
are farthest removed from use, the arts of music and 
poetry. 

The Tone-Poem, called "Thus Spake Zarathustra," 
by Strauss, is an illustration in point. It is a compo- 



54 THE CHANGING ORDER 

sition striking in its originality and power, extra- 
ordinarily intricate in its modes, and more compre- 
hensive in its scope than any music that has been 
heard up to its time. The significance of the com- 
position resides in the fact that a most intimate union 
and correspondence exist in it between tones and 
soul-states. It is a music that follows no external 
necessity whatever. Its effects are measured in terms 
of psychology. Though freed from formal law it is 
yet bound by a profound mastery, the law of psychic 
process. It exhibits with absolute fidelity the history 
of a soul. It is a pure form of esoteric music. Now, 
if this composition stood alone, if the world had not 
been preparing to receive a music of this character 
for over a cencury, it might not signify a general ten- 
dency. But for a century music has been transferring 
its center of control from the outer to the inner. 
Mozart's ideal, for instance, was simple and perfectly 
organized progression, without great passional force. 
With Beethoven the outer relations are obscured in 
the interest of greater soul expression. An entire 
revolution was then wrought by Wagner when he 
conceived music dramatically, emancipated it from 
formal restrictions, rendered it capable of expressing 
the vast issues of modern life, and offered music for- 
ever to the free uses of the soul. Emboldened by his 
example the younger composers have continued to 
enlarge the expressive capacities of music until today 
it includes nearly the whole idealism of the modern 
world. 

The poets who best represent the esoteric tendencies 
in literature are Whitman and Browning. It is a 



THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 55 

matter of no little moment that two representative 
English writers of the nineteenth century were ideal- 
ists. The peculiarity of Whitman's writings is that 
they can not be understood with any success if ap- 
proached from the outside. The reader must be ab- 
sorbed in the thing contemplated — he must become 
the poet, look through his eyes, realize the universe 
in his way; "I act as the tongue of you," said Whit- 
man ; "In my poems, all concentrates in, radiates from, 
evolves about myself. I have but one central figure, 
the general human personality typified in myself. 
Only I am sure my book inevitably necessitates that 
its reader transpose him or herself into that central 
position and become the actor, experiencer, himself or 
herself, of every page, every aspiration, every line." 
Other books remain standing on the outside of our 
personality and contribute only to our taste or our 
knowledge; this book incorporates itself with the 
reader and contributes pride, love, health, conscious- 
ness. By some strange process a man has actually 
got into a book and hence the book must be appre- 
hended for its character, not for the mere grace of its 
manner. His writings derive from personality and to 
personality they return. To an occultist, a mystic, 
one accustomed to read the symbolism of words and 
forms, Whitman presents no difficulty. The spread 
of his influence, the recognition of his power, seems 
to indicate the increasing idealism of the modern 
mind. 

II. 

Browning displays his esotericism in three ways: in 



56 THE CHANGING ORDER 

the personalization of his poetry, in the artistic modes of 
his expression, and in the forms of his philosophy. 

To personalize poetry is to inform it with life. Ob- 
jective art is impersonal. For its effects depend upon 
skillful manipulation of materials. The artist as a 
man remains concealed. The world is indifferent to 
the authorship of Shakespeare's plays for they are un- 
informed by personality. They were written to pro- 
duce stage effects. They were tested by their dra- 
matic outcome: do they play well? Is the dramatic 
motive sufficient? Is the dramatic consequence re- 
quired? That the audience should be informed, vi- 
talized, transformed, did not enter into their dramatic 
purpose. While Shakespeare was a great artist, the 
greatest master of strictly dramatic motives that the 
world has ever known, he need not have been a great 
personality. In esoteric art a great personality is 
presupposed. Greatness is an attribute that must be- 
long to the man before it can enter into and character- 
ize his work. Whitman's writings rest absolutely upon 
the character of the writer. In one place he says of 
himself and his book: 

"I have loved the earth, sun, animals; I have despised riches; 

I have given alms to every one that ask'd, stood up for the 
stupid and crazy, devoted my income and labor to others, 

Hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and in- 
dulgence toward the people, taken off my hat to nothing 
known or unknown, 

Gone freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the 
young, and with the mothers of families, 

Read these leaves to myself in the open air, tried them by trees, 
stars, rivers, 

Dismisa'd whatever insulted by own soul or defiled my body, 



THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 57 

Claim'd nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim'd 

for others on the same terms, 
Sped to the camps, and comrades found and accepted from 

every State, 
(Upon this breast has many a dying soldier lean'd to breathe 

his last, 
This arm, this hand, this voice, have nourish'd, rais'd, restored, 
To life recalling many a prostrate form ; ) 
I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the taste 

of myself, 
Rejecting none, permitting all." 

By the truth of this declaration, Whitman's poetry- 
rises or falls. His character vitalizes the lines, the 
motive of the line being to vitalize the reader. The 
art forms have no independent value; they exist sim- 
ply as a means of conveying life to those not having 
life. Untold latencies thrill in every page. 

As Browning employs the dramatic method he hides 
himself behind dramatic masks in some degree, but 
nevertheless the reader is always conscious that his 
poems move not by dramatic necessity so much as 
compelled by thought, and that behind the fictions, 
informing every line, is the author, alert, unconquer- 
able, wearing a hundred disguises, contributing 
something out of his own abounding personality, 
something that stimulates and vivifies the reader. In 
a passage in "The Ring and the Book," Browning out- 
lines the theory of which the poem itself is the ex- 
emplification : 

"I find first 
Writ down for very A B C of fact, 
'In the beginning God made heaven and earth' ; 
From which, no matter with what lisp, I spell 
And speak you out a consequence — that man, 



58 THE CHANGING ORDER 

Man — as befits the made, the inferior thing — 
Purposed, since made, to grow, not make in turn, 
Yet forced to try and make, else fail to grow — 
Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain 
The good beyond him — which attempt is growth — 
Repeats God's process in man's due degree, 
Attaining man's proportionate result — 
Creates, no, but resuscitates, perhaps. 
Inalienable, the arch-prerogative 
Which turns thought, act — conceives, expresses tool 
No less, man, bounded, yearning to be free, 
May so project his surplusage of soul 
In search of body, so add self to self 
By owning what lay ownerless before — 
So find, so fill full, so appropriate forms — 
That, although nothing which had never life 
Shall get life from him, be, not having been, 
Yet, something dead may get to live again, 
Something with too much life or not enough, 
Which, either way imperfect, ended once: 
An end whereat man's impulse intervenes. 
Makes new beginning, starts the dead alive, 
Completes the incomplete and saves the thing." 

"The Ring and the Book" is Browning's test of this 
proposition. Taking facts and persons as history fur- 
nished, he fused his live soul with the inert materials, 
vitalized them by contact with himself, his motive 
being to write a book which would mean beyond the 
facts, suffice the needs of art, and save the soul be- 
side. An effect in soul can be secured only by such 
informing process. There is but this means of soul 
enlargement. Personality is given increase only by 
contact with personality. And just so much power 
proceeds out of a book as went to the making of the 
composition. 



THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 59 

The striking feature of Browning's personality is 
its vigor — a vigor of mind and body that gives to his 
whole work the note of strenuousness, a vigor of soul 
that makes him an unconquerable optimist. Stren- 
uousness, the outcome of physical and mental vigor, 
and optimism, the result of a deeply penetrative insight, 
are the two most marked characteristics of his nature. 
Physical and spiritual courage enabled him to describe 
himself truthfully as "one who never turned his back, 
but marched breast forward; never doubted clouds 
would break ; never dreamed, though right were worst- 
ed, wrong would triumph; held we fall to rise, are 
baffled to fight better, sleep to wake." This might and 
courage are infused into the reader; he becomes eager 
to assume an armor, seize a weapon, and strike out for 
some cause with the strength of a newly liberated soul. 

But vigor, admirable in any character, is not enough 
for purposes of conversion and vitalization. Carlyle 
compares with Browning in point of vigor. He had in- 
tensity, the might of a Titan. But to what end was 
his strength expended? Was it not strength beating it- 
self out against prison bars, rather than strength freely 
winging its way to new heights? Carlyle lacked the 
far-seeing spirit. He knew no unity in the chaos, no 
clue through the vast revel of the cosmic atoms. He 
was short-sighted, hemmed in, fought in desperation 
his friend and foe alike. Consequently, Carlyle dis- 
courages, not empowers. He never sets his reader on 
a hill or starts him on an endless journey. For the 
guide himself sees no goal to be won, not even the 
path for the feet. 

Browning contributes power, opens up vistas, ex- 



60 THE CHANGING ORDER 

plains destiny, imparts hope, reveals the goal. It is 
his optimism that gives carrying power to his personal 
vigor. His book regenerates through the fullness and 
force of an embodied personality. 

III. 

A second aspect of Browning's esotericism is dis- 
closed in the features of his artistic method. Instead 
of adopting the objective stage as the scene of his 
exploits, he chooses for a worthier place the soul itself 
and depends upon the reader, as it were, to supply 
the footlights, shift the scenes, give the cues and per- 
form the action. The method which he follows is that 
of suggestion, for the success of which the active re- 
sponse of the reader is required. The author initiates 
the poem but the reader completes it. In "Pauline" the 
action in seen to take place within the soul ; the actors 
are desires, passions, and thoughts, and without sub- 
jective experience, the power of inner sight, the reader 
can not follow the poem or understand a single mo- 
tive. In the preface to "Paracelsus" Browning gave 
warning to his readers: "A work like mine depends 
on the intelligence and sympathy of the reader for its 
success — indeed were my scenes stars, it must be his 
co-operating fancy which, supplying all chasms, shall 
collect the scattered lights into one constellation — a 
Lyre or a Crown." 

Not only is the process of a poem subjective but 
also its unity. What one may call logical unity, that 
form which characterizes most prose and some poetry, 
is external; thought grows out of thought, line out 



THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 61 

of line, in the relation of cause and effect. But syn- 
thetic unity is internal; there are no visible causes — 
only effects. Again in the preface to "Paracelsus" the 
author explained his method : "It is an attempt to reverse 
the method usually adopted by writers whose aim is 
to set forth any phenomena of the mind or passions, 
by the operation of persons and events; and that in- 
stead of having recourse to an external machinery of 
incidents to create and evolve a crisis I desire to pro- 
duce, I have ventured to display somewhat minutely 
the mood itself in its rise and progress, and have 
suffered the agency by which it is influenced and de- 
termined, to be generally discernible in its effects 
alone, and subordinate throughout, if not altogether 
excluded." In many cases, then, the real action may 
precede the one recorded. The poem will not begin 
with the first line or end with the last line; it is that 
which is suggested. The real poem is that developed 
in the imagination of the reader, or it will be found 
floating in a sea of idea. The unifying element is the 
idea and not the form, just as at night unity is given the 
stars by the sky and not by the light. It is not pos- 
sible to count the stars ; it is not possible to enumerate 
all the facts and experiences of life, but the multiple 
stars are unified by their setting in a single sky and 
the multiple facts may be gathered into a single unify- 
ing principle, some universal essence, some solvent 
of experience. Such a solvent is the principle of Love. 
Browning's poems number several hundred ; their unity 
is found in the principle of Love. This form of unity 
I would call idealistic or esoteric. The reader dis- 
covers the method when he finds that he must read 



62 THE CHANGING ORDER 

a poem through before the meaning of the whole ap- 
pears, then successive readings are required before 
its full significance is made clear. Such is the method 
employed by seers and mystics. Whitman said: "I 
will not make poems with reference to parts. But 
I will make poems, songs, thoughts with reference to 
ensemble. And I will not sing with reference to a day 
but with reference to all days. And I will not make 
a poem nor the least part of a poem but has reference 
to the soul." Similarly Emerson might have said: "I 
will not write essays with reference to parts but with 
reference to wholes." For the unity of his essays is 
ideal or synthetic. They have no logic — nor were they 
meant to have logic. They contain something better 
than logic — a universalizing idea. 

Another characteristic of Browning's artistic method 
is the correspondency existing between form and con- 
tent. There are two classes of poets, the traditional 
and the original. The first class aims to give a perfect 
objective form to any given content, the form being 
that which has received the sanction of tradition. The 
poet of the second class permits the thought to shape 
itself, striving only for self expression or revelation. 
In a passage in "Aurora Leigh" Mrs. Browning asks, 
"What form is best for poems?" Her answer is given 
in terms of the untraditional class: 
"Let me think 

Of forms less, and the external. Trust the spirit, 

As souvran nature does, to make the form; 

For otherwise we only imprison spirit 

And not embody. Inward evermore 

To outward — so in life, and so in arfi 

Which still is life. 



THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 63 

Five acts to make a play? 
And why not fifteen? Why not ten? or seven? 
What matter for the number of the leaves, 
Supposing the tree lives and grows? Exact 
The literal unities of time and place, 
When 't is the essence of passion to ignore 
Both time and place? Absurd. Keep up the fire 
And leave the generous flames to shape themselves." 

This quite exactly describes the usage of many of the 
leading artists of the century. The tendency of Wagner's 
method, for instance, was to seek artistic effects in un- 
derlying harmonies of thought and tonality. His music 
springs from the words, and the words from the 
music. "Unless the subject absorbs me completely," 
Wagner wrote to his friend Uhlig, "I cannot produce 
twenty bars worth listening to." And again he said: 
"The musical phrases fit themselves on the verses and 
periods without any trouble on my part; everything 
grows as if wild from the ground." The orchestra is, 
therefore, no mere accompaniment, but an essential 
expression of the thought and action. "Every bar of 
music," the author explained to Liszt, "is justified only 
by the fact that it explains something in the action 
or in the character of the actor." Always his themes 
originate coherently and with the character of plastic 
phenomena. In other words, renouncing the artificial 
and formal symmetry of beat and measure, he endeav- 
ored to correlate physical and psychical phenomena. 
The beauty of his music is one that belongs to idea. 
Such also is the beauty of Whitman's poetry. He 
dared to permit the original creative energy to issue 
forth without hindrance. There is a deep in man 
below the region that mind arrogates mastery upon 



64 THE CHANGING ORDER 

— a deep that is unsounded, recognized in every life 
but not defined. The pulsing, dynamic motion of that 
sea gives to Whitman's lines their form and fashion. 
They are absolutely genuine, faithful to the mastery 
of the soul, not independent as fluency and ornamen- 
tation are, but dependent as truth is bound to be. His 
poems grew out of their source as unerringly as lilacs 
or roses on a bush. He is as careless about mere 
beauty as the stars about numbers. Said another 
esoteric artist, the French painter Millet: "Beauty is 
the fit, the serviceable character well rendered, an idea 
well wrought out with largeness and simplicity." 
"Beauty is expression. If I am to paint a mother, I 
shall try and make her beautiful, simply because she 
is looking at her child.' , "Has not everything in 
creation its own place and hour? Who would ven- 
ture to say that a potato is inferior to a pomegranate ?" 
In proof of these statements Millet would point to cer- 
tain frescoes of Giotto at Padua and show how the 
expression, the character in them was everything. 
Their naturalness was fine even if it were only that of 
one man washing the feet of another. And then by 
way of contrast he would show the works of Titian 
such as "The Nativity": "There," he would say, "the 
figures lack the roughness of the peasant type, the 
room is unlike a stable, the child is naked instead of 
being wrapped in woolens. There you see the begin- 
ning of an art of ornamentation." 

In Browning the intimacy between the outer and the 
inner is perhaps the closest in literary history. His 
style and rhetoric are always dramatic. The inner and 
the outer exactly correspond. Instead of having a few 



THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 65 

standard forms or molds of expression he has as many 
forms as poems. The critical question we have a right 
to ask is concerning the adequacy of expression. Such 
queries as: Is the poem musical, has it perfect rhyme, 
is it smooth, soft, metrical, well ordered? — such quer- 
ies will not reach the heart of the matter at all. But 
has the poem character, does it say what it means, does 
it act genuinely out of its own substance? — these 
questions will win the secret. The poems display 
a beauty that is not formal, but characteristic. The 
love poems, for instance, which exhibit the perfect union 
of kindred lives, are of unvarying sweetness. Hate will 
introduce at once a jarring, discordant note, as in the 
"Spanish Cloister." The Gipsy's song in the "Flight 
of the Duchess," and the recital called "Mesmerism," 
have mesmeric power to loosen and to bind. The 
"Cavalier Tunes" move to their appropriate measures ; 
the marching of the soldiery, the circling of wine cups 
in the air, the galloping of horses. "The Grammar- 
ian's Funeral" proceeds by slow steps and solemn 
pauses. "Abt Vogler" opens with the pulse of the 
music that is still beating in the musician's soul. "An- 
drea del Sarto" reflects the quiet silver gray of the 
evening and darkens with the spread of night over 
the painter's home. In these poems, Browning proves 
himself the undisputed master of the psychological 
method. 

Any genuine criticism of Browning starts then from 
the inside, and this is the most difficult of all forms 
of criticism, requiring preparation both deep and wide, 
deep in personality, wide in knowledge. Any techni- 
cian, however evil-minded, can correct bad drawing, 



66 THE CHANGING ORDER 

but only one who has the capacity for being inspired 
can interpret drawing. The critic must become the 
artist, he takes his stand at the center, and watches the 
growth of form out of thought, a growth that in the 
case of a great and genuinely creative artist is always 
vital and inevitable. It is to the critics of the formal 
type that Browning turns in one of his poems : 

"Was it grammar wherein you would 'coach' me — 

You — pacing in even that paddock 

Of language alloted you ad hoc, 
With a clog at your fetlocks — you scorners 
Of me free of all its four corners? 
Was it 'clearness of words which convey thought'? 
Aye, if words never needed enswathe aught 

But ignorance, impudence, envy 
And malice — which word-swathe would then vie 
With yours for a clearness crystalline? 

But had you to put in one small line 
Some thought hig and bouncing — as waddle 
Of goose, born to cackle and waddle 
And bite at man's heel, as Goose- wont is 
Never felt plague its puny os frontis, 
You'd know, as you hissed, spat and sputtered, 

Clear cackle is easily uttered!'* 



V. 



A third aspect is the philosophic. Browning is a 
profound thinker. Having philosophic content to dis- 
close, he employs for. that purpose innumerable sym- 
bols. His ideas rarely appear in their abstractedness but 
as draped in sights and sounds. Through the sym- 
bols we are able to reach back to the ideas and dis- 
cover a complete systematic philosophy. The sym- 



THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 67 

bols, in short, relate to just three themes : the Good, 
the True and the Beautiful, which in the last syn- 
thesis become resolved in the one supreme conception 
of the Absolute Love. All the incidents and persons 
are absorbed in the idea. The objects are multiple, 
but the idea is one. What has been accomplished 
is the illustration of a transcendental philosophy. 
Browning has done for idealism what Dante did for 
mediaeval theology — made it visible. We perceive 
in his poems philosophy in masks. Philosophy loves 
and hates, hopes and fears, strives, fails, succeeds. 
W r e perceive men in many guises and in many cir- 
cumstances, governed by Reason. We contemplate 
thought thinking itself, then by a strange indirection 
we become the thinker, and construct a philosophy: 
God in the absolute is the ultimate essence, with at- 
tributes of Power and Love. The particular and tem- 
poral modes of Power's and Love's manifestation are 
Truth, Beauty, and Love, with their opposites, False- 
hood, Ugliness, and Hate. The triad of positive and 
continuing factors, while existing in correlation (since 
their ground is the one Unity), have different means 
of expression in Time, and require for perception in 
the human the development of special faculties. Truth 
abides in the objective realm, where God's Power op- 
erates, and is the concern of the Intellect. Beauty 
and Love reside in the subjective, where God's Love 
is made manifest, and are the motives, respectively, of 
Feeling and the Moral Will. Truth is abstract, and is 
gained by observational and ratiocinative process, 
having its ground in the object world. Beauty and 
Love are concrete, and rest in immediate perception, 



68 THE CHANGING ORDER 

since they begin and end in human consciousness. 
The scientist approaches God by unending steps of 
hypothesis and proof; the artist and lover know Him 
face to face. Art and religion, in their turn, while 
agreeing in their intuitional and concrete methods, 
are differentiated by the medium in which each has 
its operation. Love is purely spiritual, having its 
source in God; art is publication, and in order to 
affect the sensibilities of men, employs material media 
— stone, color, sound or language. For the exhibition 
and dispersion of this metaphysics, Browning's poems 
may be said to exist. 

In one thing, Browning as becomes a poet, stands 
supreme, namely, in the emphasis placed upon Love. 
Other philosophers had chosen for their absolute prin- 
ciple Idea, as with Hegel, or Will, as with Schopen- 
hauer. The poet saw that the solvent of all phenom- 
ena, natural and spiritual, was Love. To know Love 
is to know God. And Browning has lovers of many 
kinds — the Grammarian, who loved knowledge and 
devoted his life with enthusiasm to the doctrine of 
de and oun; Fra Lippo Lippi, who loved his Flor- 
ence and its environment of mountain and wood; 
Aprille, who loved Beauty, whose aspiration it was 
to carve in stone the forms of things, and for his 
shapes to paint a world, and into his world to infuse 
through song all passions and soft emotions, and, con- 
summating all, to supply all chasms with music; then 
above all, the lovers of Love: Rudel, Norbert, Pom- 
pilia, who, though suffering deprivation and pain, 
found light enough in the eyes of the loved one to rise 
to heaven. 



THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 69 

Love is aspiration, the want and passion of the 
soul, the Platonic madness. It is the pursuit of some- 
thing, the eager quest of an ideal. 

Metaphysical as this conception is, Browning does 
not lose himself in the abstraction, but faces fairly 
and courageously the actual incidents of nature and 
man. Nature exhibits power and intelligence, but it 
seems to be in moral strife, indifferent to weal or woe ; 
but penetrate deeply enough, and God appears in the 
stock and the stone, in the plant and the bird, an evo- 
lutionary force tending to the Good. In the world of 
men wrong is often on the throne, and evil seems often 
to endure beyond the good; but look deeply enough, 
and the wrong is righted and evil is seen to serve. 

Beyond all others, Browning is the poet of love in 
its human aspect. You will not find anywhere, ex- 
cept in modern fiction, a treatment of the relations 
between the sexes so honest and truthful. Other 
poets have shunned this field, except to write sonnets 
to their mistresses' eyebrows. Were it not for the 
novel, the Italian opera, and Browning, we would 
hardly be aware of the presence of two sexes in the 
world of artistic folk. If a New Zealander were to 
visit America with Emerson as a guide-book, what il- 
lumination would he receive concerning the most com- 
mon facts that would meet his observation. Emerson 
suspected the sexes. He was silent about them, be- 
cause his philosophy of idea did not contain them. 
But what a multitude of men and women throng 
Browning's pages — men and women, loving, hating, 
united, estranged, in every degree of relationship. A poet 
who starts right is apt to conclude right. He wins 



70 THE CHANGING ORDER 

our allegiance by his truthfulness in treating the 
world's most primitive theme. 

From this philosophy seen in essence in the life of 
men and women, the larger theory of the universe 
proceeds. The universe is love coming into mani- 
festation. The world is a becoming. The mode is 
evolutionary, an unending process. Love was at its 
beginning, accompanying the "first huge Nothing." 
Slowly the plan of the earth unrolled — a plan involving 
love as its motive and end. Man appears endowed with 
unsatisfied yearnings. With man began a tendency to 
God. In the order of process a Christ appeared, a god- 
man, the all-loving, fulfilling the prophecy of the uni- 
verse, outlining what was to be. In the fullness of time 
men shall be as gods. Love shall reign from star to star. 

Concerning the evolutionary process Browning ad- 
vances the following propositions : Evolution is an order 
imposed on every object in virtue of its being. There is 
no escape. If the object lags at one point, it is hastened 
at another. All things are thrust out into the cosmic 
stream. The soul of things moves as the planets in their 
orbit, hasting, unresting. Redemption is wrought into 
the very constitution of things. The Christs do not save 
— the universe saves. 

The sign of evolution is aspiration. Growth is a com- 
ing into being. The whole universe groans in its travail, 
yearning for accession of life. It reaches out its hands 
after God. It is not what man does, but what he would 
do, that exalts him. There is no good fixed and abso- 
lute, the attainment of which marks one's salvation. The 
good is the desire for the good. Salvation is a process. 
Attainment is a tendency. Paracelsus reached the point 



THE ESOTERIC TENDENCY IN LITERATURE 71 

of death, with body marred and soul a wreckage, but he 
pressed God's lamp to his breast. He saw the truth, and 
the seeing gave him means for a never ending progress. 
What he achieved was not a fixed salvation, but a ten- 
dency. All good is relative. 

The accompaniment of evolution is struggle. Ma- 
terials offer obstruction to spiritual possession. The 
artist finds his media intractable. He cannot mold the 
clay as he would; he shapes, re-shapes, adds, subtracts 
the stubborn materials, only to make a shape all unlike 
his desire. So life presents unsealed walls. Our pur- 
poses are balked. Nevertheless, there can be no peace. 
Browning sounds the call to battle. He does not avoid 
the evil, waiting for Nirvana, an ending in dream. Rather 
he welcomes the strife, grapples with the evil, endures 
the pain and defeat. That is the way of the world, not 
to be resisted. 

Evolution is eternal. As love was at the beginning, 
so love continues in the process. There is no stoppage; 
there can be no stoppage. Love is exhaustless. Immor- 
tality is not a dogma — it is an experience. It is the con- 
sciousness of growth in love. , 

Starting with an esoteric philosophy, the principle of 
which works by inner evolutionary or esoteric means, 
the very outworking of this principle in his own life 
lead Browning to personalize his poetry and to follow 
the evolutionary or esoteric method in the forms of his 
art. 



SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART: GEORGE 

INNESS. 

I. 

"Some persons suppose," said George Inness, in one of 
his wonderfully suggestive conversations, "that land- 
scape has no power to communicate human sentiment; 
but this is a great mistake. The civilized landscape pe- 
culiarly can, and therefore I love it more and think it 
more worthy of reproduction than that which is savage 
and untamed. It is more significant." In these words, 
George Inness, whom I fain would believe the greatest 
among landscape artists, touches upon a discovery that 
the human mind has been long in making; the discovery 
of the essential unity and kinship of all living things, the 
discovery that landscape, sunshine and atmosphere yield 
a full and adequate response to human thought and feel- 
ing, that these have significance, not only in their own 
right, but also as defining and interpreting man's own 
subjectivity. 

The stages of exploration whereby the world's paint- 
ers have approached the monistic conception are three: 
the first, a transitional era, during which, having some 
faint perception of kinship with nature, men freed them* 
selves from the theological dogma of dualism ; the second, 
the stage of realism, when under the direction of ma- 
terialistic science, painters looked outwardly and de- 
scribed phenomena in their superficial aspect; the third, 



SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART 73 

that of idealization, corresponding to the modern stage 
of monistic science, when the discovery was made that 
nature has its mystery, that there is something underly- 
ing the objective reality, that "something," perceived by 
Wordsworth, "whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky, 
and in the mind of man," and which is further described 
as "a motion and a spirit that impels all thinking things, 
all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things." 
The time of emancipation and first discovery was the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries, and exactly coincided 
with the emancipatory movements inaugurated by Luther 
in the sphere of religion and by Copernicus and Galileo 
in the realm of knowledge. Nature, to be sure, had been 
employed to some extent by the early Italian masters, 
but simply as background. In the paintings of Fra 
Filippo Lippi and Botticelli and other members of the 
Renaissance group, even as early as Fra Angelico of the 
strictly pietisic and ethical school, appear charming little 
bits of landscape hidden away in the background of 
madonnas and saints, seen perhaps only through win- 
dows and open doors as if the caprice or accident of the 
moment. And in these dainty glimpses of clouds, woods, 
mountain and river the suggestion is stealthily made that 
saints and madonnas were not wholly heavenly minded, 
but lived environed by the facts of this our mundane 
sphere. "The world's no blot for us, nor blank," Brown- 
ing makes Lippi say, "It means intensely and means 
good." The discoveries of science, the substitution of 
the sun for the earth as the center of the planetary sys- 
tem, destroyed forever the egotistic assumption of the 
centrality of man in the universe; and the history of 



74 THE CHANGING ORDER 

painting from that day to this might almost be said to 
consist in the disappearance of man as having sole and 
independent value, and in the advance of the backgrounds 
of the early painters into the foreground of art's canvas. 
By the seventeenth century, in the works of Reubens, 
the Poussins, Claude Lorraine, and Salvator Rosa, the 
independence of landscape is acknowledged. Nature, 
it is true, was treated by these painters with hardly a 
touch of realism. Their canvases are formal, pedantic 
and artificially composed. But their task was not to re- 
alize but to emancipate. There is even the need of com' 
promise and in many paintings, whose chief interest is 
clearly that of the natural scene, some figure from the 
old scriptures or reminiscent of the mythologies would 
be included in deference to the traditions. 

It belonged to the Dutch painters of the seventeenth 
century, to the group about Hobbema and Ruisdael, to 
ascertain with accuracy the content of the objective 
vision. Certain aspects of nature, as the forms of trees, 
the manner of running water and moving clouds, occa- 
sionally the fugitive play of light, were understood by 
them as never before, and recorded with fidelity to the 
object. Their pictures bear signs of their penetrating 
observation; their objects are heavy with the pull of 
gravitation, but of inter-penetration, of the sense of re- 
lationship between the painter and the scene there is 
scarcely a token. In the Christian masters there was 
lacking the sense of the actual; even more do we miss 
in the work of the Dutch painters of this period the feel- 
ing of surmise. But after long centuries of neglect of 
nature, their task was to study, explore and record the 
objective world. To man and objects they gave equal 



SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART 75 

value. Their motive was realism; their merits were 
frankness and fidelity in handling the objects of vision. 

Upon the Dutch painters and their honesty of report 
the idealists built their superstructure — or if this figure 
be too dualistic, let it be said that when Constable and 
Gainsborough saw how good the actual appeared when 
seen with the objective eye, they were emboldened to 
record the results of a more penetrating and sensitizing 
vision. The movement now begun in England and con- 
tinued in France by the Barbizon painters has reference 
to the idealization of landscape, or more properly to the 
realization of the ideal or sensient element in landscape. 
Varied as are the actual forms of nature, the perception 
on the part of modern painters of the sensient life gov- 
erning forms is even more various, the difference, how- 
ever, being measured by relative depth of vision rather 
than by the presence or absence of humanizing capacity; 
for one and all are monistic in tendency and perceive 
that nature is passional and that passion is natural. Con- 
stable, a painter of the transition, carries still something 
of the material burden of the Dutch painters ; but so deli- 
cate is Corot in sentiment that only the quiet morning or 
the evening, treated with Doric simplicity and harmony, 
measures his still nature. Less classic than Corot, Rous- 
seau, whose symbols are distance, sky depth, and intri- 
cate woods, strikes deeper into nature's sentiency. In 
Delacroix the objects of nature appear almost altogether 
as symbols, so conscious is he of kinship in language. 
With George Inness the identities are well nigh perfected, 
with the emphasis laid perhaps a little too strongly upon 
his own impression: yet I would not call Inness — or 
indeed any painter of this group — an impressionist, but 



76 THE CHANGING ORDER 

an expressionist. His two hundred and more land- 
scapes are the notes and jottings of a soul's biography. 
Could all his paintings be displayed together in the order 
of their composition, they would show even in their so- 
lution of the problems of light and perspective the stages 
of his spiritual history. To this state, then, landscape art 
has arrived : a single painting may be faithful at once to 
what is called nature and to what is termed human ; with- 
out neglecting any of the problems of natural form and 
color, a painter may serve his own need of self expression. 
"Was somebody," said Whitman, "asking to see the soul ? 
See your own shape and countenance, persons, substances, 
beasts, the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands." 

II. 

The annals of Inness's life are simple. A biographer 
would note his Scotch descent, the general Celtic bear- 
ing and habit of gesture, rapid speech, and imaginative 
conversations, which might lead to the recollection of 
Matthew Arnold's proposition that from the Celtic the 
English derives its "natural magic." He would mark 
the slender, agile form, the lines of the face, denoting 
extraordinary fire and energy — the face that in later life 
had the drawn intensity of Michael Angelo's. The paint- 
er's career — the labor he endured first as a grocer's ap- 
prentice, then in an engraver's shop, before he found his 
kingdom, and then his struggles for place and mainten- 
ance after his true work had begun — would illustrate the 
certainty of genius of possessing its own. His visits to 
Europe and acquaintance with the Barbizon painters 
whereby the direction of his art was confirmed would be 



SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART 77 

pointed to as one of the happy accidents whereof no man's 
life is bereft. His excitement at the news of the firing 
on Fort Sumpter and his insistence upon going to the 
war, though he could not pass the examination, would 
furnish diversion and be seen to redound to the painter's 
humanity. The record of idyllic periods, of home and 
studio life at and near New York and Boston, of suc- 
cesses and increasing fame, would make up a biography 
that in its main lines would be not unlike that of many 
others born in uninspiring environment, but destined by 
pure force of genius to achieve great name and fame. 

III. 

To get the secret of an art so unique in its quality of 
balancing the outer and inner, one must seize on the 
genius itself. Primarily, Inness was a man of ideas, 
holding carefully considered opinions not merely upon 
art, but respecting questions of science and metaphysics. 
He was himself a "spiritualist" and agreed on the whole 
with Swedenborg. He was a voluminous writer in both 
prose and verse, and left masses of manuscript. His 
writings prove him to have been a mystic. One of his 
studies was concerning the science of numbers, wherein 
he developed a system of mathematical symbols: thus I 
denoting infinity, 2 conjunction, 3 potency, 4 substance, 
5 germination, 6 material condition, etc. While fre- 
quently incoherent and rhapsodical in composition, there 
was no lack of force or directness in speech. He was 
an astonishing talker when once aroused to deny or af- 
firm — as strenuous as Carlyle and with something of the 
same Scottish disputatious nature. His judgments were 



78 THE CHANGING ORDER 

invariably formed on the authority of the inner conscious- 
ness. "The consciousness of immortality/' he once said, 
"is wrapped up in all the experiences of my life, and this 
is to me the end of the argument. Man's unhappiness 
arises from disobedience to the monitions within him." 
In argument, he supported the side of the sincere and un- 
conventional. Among painters he admired such men as 
Daubigny and Rousseau in whom there was no trace of 
affectation. He was impatient with men like Bouguereau 
and Verboeckhoven, who painted "mercantile imbecili- 
ties" from simple spiritual inertia. He thought Meis- 
sonier, Jerome and Detaille wonderful painters, but that 
their aim was material rather than spiritual, imitative 
rather than creative. He pronounced Turner full of 
falsity and clap-trap, saying that Turner's Slave Ship 
was the "most infernal piece of clap-trap ever painted," 
that there was nothing in it and it was not even a fine 
bouquet of color. He thought Millet the greatest figure 
painter that ever lived, that he conveyed the sentiment of 
labor and home with just enough of objective force for 
perfect lucidity. "If a painter," he said, "could unite 
Meissonier's careful reproduction of details with Corot's 
inspirational power, he would be a very god of art. But 
Corot's art is higher than Meissonier's. Let Corot paint 
a rainbow and his work reminds you of the poet's descrip- 
tion, The rain-bow is the spirit of the flowers.' Let Meis- 
sonier paint a rain-bow, and his work reminds you of a 
definition in chemistry. The one is poetic truth, the other 
is scientific truth; the former is aesthetic, the latter is 
analytic." 

Among his views on art, I note the following: "What 
the painter tries to do is simply to reproduce in other 



SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART 79 

minds the impression which a scene has made upon him. 
A work of art does not appeal to the intellect. It does 
not appeal to the moral sense. Its aim is not to instruct, 
not to edify, but to awaken an emotion. This emotion 
may be one of love, of pity, of hate, of pleasure, or of 
pain; but it must be a single emotion if the work has 
unity, as every such work should have, and the true 
beauty of the work consists in the sentiment or emotion 
which it inspires. Details in the picture must be elabor- 
ated only full enough to reproduce the impression that 
the artist wishes to produce. When more than this is 
done, the impression is weakened or lost, and we see 
simply an array of external things, which may be very 
cleverly painted and look very real but which do not 
make an artistic painting. The effort and the difficulty 
of the artist is to combine the two: to make the thought 
clear and to preserve the unity of impression." "The true 
use of art is, first, to cultivate the artist's own spiritual 
nature, and secondly, to enter as a factor in general civili- 
zation. Every artist who, without reference to external 
circumstances, aims truly to represent the ideas and emo- 
tions which come to him when he is in the presence of 
nature, is in process of his own spiritual development, 
and is a benefactor of his race. No man can attempt the 
reproduction of any idea within him from a pure motive, 
as love of the idea itself, without being in the course of 
his own regeneration. The difficulties necessary to be 
overcome in communicating the substance of his idea 
(which in this case is feeling or emotion), to the end that 
the idea may be more and more perfectly conveyed to 
others, involves the exercise of his intellectual faculties ; 
and soon the discovery is made that the moral element 



80 THE CHANGING ORDER 

underlies all, that unless the moral also is brought into 
play, the intellectual faculties are not in condition for 
conveying the artistic impulse or inspiration." "The 
principles that underlie art are spiritual principles — the 
principle of unity and the principle of harmony. Christ 
never uttered a word that forbade the erecting or enjoy- 
ing of sensuous form. The fundamental necessity of the 
artistic life is the cultivation of the moral powers, and the 
loss of those powers is the loss of artistic power. The 
efforts of the Catholic Church to excite the imagination 
are admirable, because the imagination is the life of the 
soul. Art is an essence as subtle as the humanity of God, 
and like it, is personal only to love — a stranger to the 
worldly minded, a myth to the intellect. I would not give 
a fig for art ideas except as they represent what I, in 
common with all men, need most — the good of our prac- 
tice in the art of life. Rivers, streams, the rippling brook, 
hillsides, sky, and clouds — all things that we see — will 
convey the sentiment of the highest art, if we are in love 
with God and the desire of the truth." 



IV. 



That Inness embodied general esoteric ideas and mean- 
ings in his paintings there is no reason to doubt, in spite 
of the evidence of their astonishing objective force. He 
believed himself to be inspired, and that "spirits" super- 
intended his painting. His mind teemed with subjects, 
derived from sources he knew not of, and his soul con- 
ceived more rapidly than even his busy hand could shape. 
His coloring, rich and luminous, has both objective and 
symbolic values. I doubt not that the lines of form in 



SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART 81 

his pictures, the relation of perspective and distance, were 
determined in accordance with a subtle symbolism of line 
and number for the interpretation of which the world 
has no key. Most of his pictures regarded objectively 
are studies in light. From descriptive notes by Richard 
Gruelle, I make a redaction of several paintings : 

a. You are looking down the center of a broad street in a 
village. In the distance you see a mass of indistinguishable ob- 
jects, bathed in a warm purple grey atmosphere, full of mysterious 
suggestiveness. On the right are some low buildings painted with 
an uncertain effect. Near them are some tall, slender trees with 
tremulous leafage. Near by is a cottage, rustic and picturesque, 
on the front of which the moon's light falls. From a window in 
this light, you see the faint glow of a lamp, whose flickering ray 
struggles wierdly with that of the moon. A bit of fence and 
some weeds complete this part of the picture. In the mid-distance 
and still to the right, some trees are but dimly seen, above which 
are the spires of a church. On the left is a group of trees, clad 
in golden green-gray foliage, their tall, graceful forms casting 
long phantom-like shadows on the ground. In the center of 
the street you see a woman accompanied by a dog. High above, 
the moon wings its way through the vast expanse of ethereal blue, 
while just above are tender grey clouds, ghost like in their evasive- 
ness and upon which the moon's light makes but faint impress. 
The entire scene is saturated with a mysterious light, the effect 
of which is enhanced by the lengthening shadows cast from the 
various objects and falling forward. 

b. In the midst of a bit of swampy meadow, where weeds 
and grasses grow in great luxuriance and are accented here and 
there by clusters of wild flowers, stands a white cow. The full 
ray of the sunlight falls on the animal with almost dazzling bril- 
liancy, illuminating the surrounding verdure into a mass of beauti- 
ful yellow-green hues. The upper sky is cloudy, a shower passing. 
From the upper right hand of the canvas and extending downward 
until lost among the grasses is a beautiful rain-bow. To the left 
is a group of trees robed in dark luxuriant green; back of them 



82 THE CHANGING ORDER 

the clouds are torn asunder and a rift of sunlight breaks through. 
Over all is the gloss of early summer — the very essence of June. 

c. A sky of charming blue, flaked with fleecy white clouds 
which hover low down on the horizon. A distance in which a 
picturesque village is seen nestling snugly among foliage of mel- 
low coloring. To the left is a row of slender trees whose pale 
yellow leafage shimmers in sunlight, which falls tenderly on the 
verdure of a bit of meadow, turning it into a mass of warm yel- 
low green found only in Autumn. This light merges by almost 
imperceptible gradations into the cool, velvety shadows which fall 
from trees of sombre coloring. In the foreground is a pool of 
water around which tall grasses and weeds grow. Rich, luminous 
and transparent the picture glows with the beauty of harmony. 
It is that coloring in which there are woven colors that thread 
up through and form into tones full of solemn grandeur. It is as 
a beautiful ode to Autumn, yet written in the language of the 
painter pure and simple. 

d. You are in the midst of a grand old forest upon which 
many centuries of time have been registered. Here we have the 
solemn hush of the primitive solitude, in whose awful silence you 
commune with the soul of all things. There are no figures intro- 
duced; in fact, nothing that would disturb the all prevailing senti- 
ment of repose. A shaft of sunlight tears its way through the 
dense foliage, turning all that is touched into deep golden tones 
save where it falls with marvelous beauty and power upon the 
trunk of an immense old tree. Here lichen, moss and fungus are 
transformed into gleaming color, that is gem-like in its effect. 
The light, which seems to saturate everything clings with tenacity 
to the old tree as if it wanted to linger. From this brilliant 
point the eye passes through gradation of rare chromatic beauty, 
into velvety shadows whose depths are filled with deep sombre 
colorings in which the gamut is almost exhausted. These tones 
likewise grade into a second mass of light farther back in the 
picture which is brought into contrast with the cool tones which 
are seen in the extreme distance. Here the lights are cool and 
phosphorescent in quality, and emerald light in color. As a 
piece of coloring it is unsurpassed. The relationship of light and 



SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART 83 

shade, of warm and cool tones, the bold rugged drawing of the 
tree forms, are well nigh perfect. 

The last picture, entitled "Sunset in the Woods," was 
begun at the moment of receiving the impression of the 
actual scene, but waited seven years for completion. 
"The idea," Inness said of it, "is to represent an effect 
of light in the woods near sundown, but to allow the im- 
agination to predominate." Here doubtless is the secret 
of the art of Inness. Fused with the actual landscape 
is another landscape. Blended with the thing seen is the 
man seeing. But landscape and painter coincide to some 
purpose. What was taken from the landscape that was 
symbolic — what was contributed by Inness that the 
picture might be expressive? I think the symbolism of 
Inness's paintings refers almost without exception to 
w T hat is evanescent and mysterious in all life. Inness was 
attracted to light on account of its elusiveness. He 
loved to paint at the hours of the day most character- 
ized by movement — he seized the dawn at its uprise, the 
sunlight in wane, the clouds that chased each other in the 
air or as shadows over the earth. He intercepted that 
most subtle and mysterious moment when sunlight and 
moonlight mingle, and shadows cross. In such moments 
Inness realized his unity with nature. In evanescent 
light, he found the outward tally of a fugitive soul of 
fire. 

V. 

The personal characteristic that most distinguished 
Inness was intensity. It is the mark of all greatly crea- 
tive natures, of those who develop from within outward. 
When absorbed in work, the lapse of time was never 



84 THE CHANGING ORDER 

noticed. He was known to work at times nearly the 
entire day, and while the inspiration lasted the impulse 
of his mind seemed to extend through the fingers to the 
brush, and fairly energize the canvas. Otherwhiles his 
moods were changeful and, not to sacrifice his energy, 
he would arrange a number of canvases in his studio 
upon each of which he would work as the mood directed. 
At other times, the picture would change its motive under 
his hand and starting out as a morning scene might end 
as a summer afternoon; or dissatisfied, picture would be 
imposed upon picture, one canvas being said to contain 
twenty-five separate and superimposed pictures. To a 
mind controlled from without by codes and conventions, 
conduct such as this seems indicative of madness. Such 
phenomena, however, require other explanation. "The 
question is not yet settled," said Poe, "whether much 
that is glorious — whether all that is profound — does not 
spring from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the 
general intellect." In other days Inness would have been 
spoken of as "beloved of the gods." We are not yet cer- 
tain to what extent a sensitive soul may work under sub- 
conscious direction, from what universal sources a genius 
may trace its derivation. 

VI. 

In France the reaction against the positive and scien- 
tific has gone to the extreme of transcedentalism. Purely 
subjective painters, like the so-called French Symbolists, 
will employ color to effect psychic states with no inten- 
tion of objective simulation. It is the merit of Inness 
that he stayed in his evolution at the point of balance. 



SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE ART 85 

Because he reconciled nature and the soul so wholly and 
joyously, he is fitted to be named among the great 
monists. He has many affinities with Whitman. They were 
both mystics and occultists of a high order, yet refused 
to subdue sensation utterly to consciousness. The poet 
colors a landscape with the sensory appeal of the painter, 
and the painter meets the poet on the high plane of the 
spiritual. They are both pantheistic and monistic: 
Inness more special and subtle in his sense of identity, 
Whitman more elemental and cosmic. Where Inness 
finds in the evanescence of light the typical symbol of 
existence, Whitman seeks the sea and reads in its abysmal 
motion, its ebb and flow, the secret of being : 

"Then last of all, caught from these shores, this hill, 
Of you tides, the mystic human meaning: 
Only by law of you, your swell and ebb, enclosing me the same, 
The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song." 

Inness was more intense in special directions, Whitman 
more brooding and inclusive ; but both were original and 
creative and gave tokens of identical inspiration. In 
one instance the poet measured strength with the painter. 
To accompany Inness's painting "The Valley of the 
Shadow of Death," and to correct its gloomy view, Whit- 
man wrote "Death's Valley :" 

"Nay, do not dream, designer dark, 
Thou hast portray'd or hit thy theme entire; 
I, hoverer of late by this dark valley, by its confines, having 

glimpses of it, 
Here enter lists with thee, claiming my right to make a symbol 

too. 
For I have seen many wounded soldiers die, 
After dread suffering — have seen their lives pass off with smiles; 



86 THE CHANGING ORDER 

And I have watch'd the death-hours of the old; and seen the 

infant die; 
The rich, with all his nurses and his doctors; 
And then the poor, in meagreness and poverty; 
And I myself for long, O Death, have breath'd my every breath 
Amid the nearness and the silent thought of thee. 

And out of these and thee, 

I make a scene, a song (not fear of thee, 

Nor gloom's ravines, nor bleak, nor dark — for I do not fear thee, 

Nor celebrate the struggle, or contortion, or hard-tied knot), 

Of the broad, blessed light and perfect air, with meadows, rippling 

tides, and trees and flowers and grass, 
And the low hum of living breeze — and in the midst God's 

beautiful eternal right hand, 
Thee, holiest minister of Heaven — thee, envoy, usherer, guide at 

last of all, 
Rich, florid, loosener of the stricture-knot call'd life, 
Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death." 

Though Inness's picture is filled with the gloom of the 
valley, yet I doubt not that when he passed through on 
his journey he might have uttered, with much cheer, the 
last words of Daubigny: "I'm going up to see if Corot 
has any new subjects to paint." 



THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE. 
I. 

Two modes of criticism have been developed in the 
history: of judgment which may be designated by the 
terms "aristocratic" and "democratic," on the ground that 
as the art of an aristocracy is the product of an exclus- 
ive culture, the object of the accompanying criticism is 
to develop and discipline "good taste," and as the art of 
a democracy is an outcome of generous human impulses, 
the aim of its criticism is to increase and fortify per- 
sonality. 

In a "classic" age, the ideal of which is to have and 
be the "best," the fine arts are patronized and enjoyed 
in the interests of an intellectual and special culture. 
The reader of books, reclining at ease in his library chair, 
assumes the judicial attitude and essays to find that in 
the book which accords with "good taste" and "right 
reason." He concerns himself largely with questions of 
taste, matters of style, and principles of correct compo- 
sition. A Matthew Arnold selects a line from Dante and 
one from Chaucer and uses them as touchstones of pro- 
priety. The aesthetic canons that support this criticism 
relate to principles of refinement, selection, symmetry, 
balance and proportion, the general effects, that is, in- 
volved in the standard classical canon of order in variety. 

The classical canon was a rule of temperance. The 
Greeks lived resolutely in the whole, loving equally truth 



88 THE CHANGING ORDER 

and beauty and goodness, proportioning the play of each 
faculty so as to secure the largest total effect of life. With 
the authority of their matchless achievements they im- 
posed upon all succeeding art and criticism an aesthetics 
corresponding to their ethics. 

But the classical idea of perfection, as it has received 
application in the modern world, is an ethics of restric- 
tion. Intellectualism dominates the process. Today to 
be cultured in the classical sense means to be intellec- 
tually refined and polished and to have the impulses of 
the heart well under the control of the head. To be 
socially aristocratic means to seek the attainment that 
only the few can achieve and to abhor the coarseness and 
vulgarity that attach to the general mass. So to be 
critically aristocratic is to love the good form and the 
grand manner that spring from a prerogatived culture 
and to detest the imperfections that belong to universal 
and humanistic art. 

The first great force that affected aesthetics to the 
opposition of the exclusory canon of culture was Chris- 
tianity. Christ directed the sight of the world away 
from the external to the truth of the inner life. The 
beauty of his religion is the beauty of holiness. The 
contest between the two principles of beauty is well illus- 
trated in "Quo Vadis," by Henryk Sienkiewicz, which 
may be read as an allegory of the struggle between 
sense and soul in the transition period from paganism to 
Christianity. Greek poetry and beauty passed with the 
death of Petronius and Eunice, but a higher poetry and 
beauty was born at the marriage of Vinicius and Lygia. 
"Whoso loves beauty is unable to love deformity," said 
Petronius, the arbiter of elegance. But in the mind of 



THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 89 

Vinicius was generated the idea that another beauty 
resided in the world, a beauty immensely pure, even 
though deformed, in which a soul abides. 

The next considerable force that tended to modify the 
classical standards was science. Instead of the cultured 
man, science rewards the knowing man; and instead of 
the art of "good form," it advocates an art of true fact. 
In one sense science is an apotheosis of the common- 
place. It exalts comprehensiveness. From its micro- 
scope, piercing inward to the atom, and from its tele- 
scope, pointing outward to the star, nothing is excluded 
that is inclusive. The love of pure truth which science 
has engendered, and the truer view of the constitution of 
things which knowledge has brought, has had a profound 
effect upon both artistic production and criticism. The 
first great result of science was the dispossession of the 
field of art of its conventional themes and the substitu- 
tion of realities in their stead. Painting and literature, 
the representative arts, have been the arts especially 
affected. The weary round of madonnas and saints that 
the church required of its pietistic painters gave way be- 
fore the awakened enthusiasm of men for the common 
sights of the town and woodland — "the shapes of things, 
their colors, lights, and shades, changes, surprises." 

Fra Filippo Lippi was in too early revolt against the 
religious theme to establish a method, but still in his 
ideas he was a precursor of scientific landscape art. 
Browning in his poem on this artist makes the painter 
monk say to his captors, the constables of Florence : 

Do you feel thankful, ay or no, 
For this fair town's face, yonder river's line, 
The mountain round it and the sky above, 



90 THE CHANGING ORDER 

Much more the figures of man, woman, child, 
These are the frame to? What's it all about? 
To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon, 
Wondered at? 

If science had not then come in to answer this question 
" What's it all about?" and to construct a new and vital 
mythology of nature, we might still be admiring St. Law- 
rence toasting on the irons, or Jerome beating with a stone 
his poor old breast. 

In literature science has rendered nugatory for modern 
service the whole body of imaginative myths and fictions. 
"Geology," says Professor Chamberlain, "has dispos- 
sessed Hades. A great field of gloomy imagery is gone. 
Dante's 'Inferno' is a literary phenomenon that will 
never recur. On the earth the whole category of ghosts 
and witches, of demons and dragons, of elves and fairies 
are gone, and the literary function they subserved is de- 
stroyed. The 'Hamlet' of the future may have its Hamlet, 
but not its ghost. Astronomy has swept away the mystic 
heavens and destroyed still richer and brighter fields of 
imagery. Aurora and Phoebus and the crystalline sphere 
are gone. The curtain of the heavens has been folded up 
and laid away as the garments of our children, as things 
loved but outgrown. Olympus is gone. Milton's cosmos, 
equally with his chaos, is only a picture of the past. 
The richest imagery of all past literature has lost its 
power save as the glory of the past. And this is simply 
because it was not true." Truth is indeed the key word 
of science. To this everything is sacrificed. But while 
old things have passed away, a new literary heaven and 
earth are being created, and upon the new materials 
imagination proposes to work with the old potency and 



THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 91 

charm and idealization. Whitman speaks the word of 
the modern in his declaration that "the true use for imag- 
inative faculty of modern times is to give ultimate vivi- 
fication to facts, to science, and to common lives, endow- 
ing them with the glories and final illustriousness which 
belong to every real thing and to real things only. 
Without that ultimate vivification which the poet or 
other artist alone can give, reality would seem incom- 
plete, and science, democracy, and life itself finally in 
vain." If facts are to be made into art, the one factor 
necessary is the sufficient artist to harvest, grind, knead, 
and bake the facts. After the success of Emerson, Ten- 
nyson, Browning, and Whitman in handling scientific 
material there need be no fear of default in imaginative 
creation in art. It may be that the actual knowledge 
we shall gain of the visible universe will make the fic- 
tions of fancy comparatively petty and jejune. How 
sublime are the heavens to Whitman ! Can fancy exceed 
this simple statement: 

I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems, 

And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the 
rim of the farther systems. 

Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding, 

Outward and outward and forever outward. 

My sun has his sun, and round him obediently wheels; 

He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit; 

And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside 
them. 

See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that, 

Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that. 

With this introduction of scientific fact into the produc- 
tive field, the intrusion of the scientific spirit in the realm 
of criticism could hardly be avoided. Something was 



92 THE CHANGING ORDER 

needed to recover criticism from its "primrose path of 
dalliance" and to give it serious content. For the criti- 
cism of taste, during the period of declining aristocracy, 
had become mere dilettantism, mere tasting and relishing 
and objecting; in the words of Professor Freeman "mere 
chatter about Shelley," or in the phrase of a still severer 
castigator of cultured methods, Professor Gildersleeve, 
"mere sensibility and opulent phraseology," "finical fault- 
finding," or "sympathetic phrasemongery." In the face 
of such incompetency science, with its inductive method, 
its conception of law, had no difficulty in bringing the 
artistic world to a new point of view. The general effect 
of scientific methods and ideas upon aesthetics has been 
to advance the spirit of disinterestedness, to adopt rela- 
tive for absolute standards, to emphasize matter instead 
of manner, and to introduce notions of life and growth. 
"Before all else," says Professor Dowden, an exponent 
of scientific interpretation, "the effort of criticism in our 
time has been to see things as they are, without partiality, 
without obtrusion of personal liking or disliking, without 
the impertinence of blame or applause." Perhaps of 
greater significance has been the recognition of law 
which has lifted the study of art out of the dominion of 
elegant trifling and allied it to the important science of 
life and mind. Specifically, three schools of study have 
arisen under the domination of the scientific spirit: first, 
the investigators who undertake the "higher criticism" 
of texts and deal narrowly with questions of fact ; second, 
the inductive interpreters who work broadly with the fac- 
tors of age, race, and environment, evolution and person- 
al force, or who scrutinize specific compositions to deter- 
mine the principles of interpretation ; third, the "compara- 



THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 93 

tive" group, who conceive literature as one of the 
provinces of universal nature, whose aim is to compare 
literature, to study origins, the development and dif- 
fusion of literary themes and forms, to group the whole 
body of literary facts according to natural lines of evolu- 
tion, and to write the history of man in so far as that his- 
tory is reflected in his imaginative creations. 

II. 

Contemporary with the seething intellectual movement 
which brought science to birth, a mightier and more ex- 
tensive social revolution created the second of the modern 
Titans, democracy. Democracy, operating both as a 
destructive and a constructive force, was destined from 
the first effectually to destroy the monarchic and feudal 
position, to modify or supplement the ideas and methods 
of science, and to start the critical world toward a new 
point of view. 

The general significance of the democratic movement 
in art is well expressed by Edward Carpenter in his 
poem "Towards Democracy :" 

Art can no longer be separated from life; 

The old canons fail; her tutelage completed, she becomes equiva- 
lent to "Nature, and hangs her curtains continuous with 
the clouds and waterfalls. 

The form of man emerges in all objects, baffling the old classifi- 
cations and definitions 

The old ties giving way beneath the strain, and the great pent 
heart heaving as though it would break — 

At the sound of the new word spoken, 

At the sound of the word "democracy." 

Wholly indifferent to the outcry of a privileged culture, 



94 THE CHANGING ORDER 

democracy has brought about an extension of the bounds 
of art in three directions. In another paper I have spoken 
of the inclosure in the field of art, through the growth 
of the modern spirit, of the average and the universal 
man. Democratic art has taken for its set purpose to un- 
fold the beauties inherent in the people and to declare the 
glory of the daily walk and trade. Two features of the 
movement which have bearing upon the theory of art re- 
main to be considered. First, the distinction drawn by 
aristocratic culture between the fine arts and the in- 
dustrial arts, is losing its force. The removal of bound- 
ary lines does not point to the abasement and vulgariza- 
tion of the fine arts, but signifies rather a radical and 
violent reversal in aesthetic theory. The grounds of art 
are shifting from outward formalism to some principle 
relating to the subjective play and life. The artist is the 
maker, the free creator, who molds materials of many 
kinds to the end of pleasure and self-realization. When 
the industrial artist works under the conditions of free- 
dom and self-realization, he ceases to be a slave to com- 
merce and production, is entitled to the name of the fine 
artist as well as to his rewards in joyous existence — the 
rewards that the divine artist gets in his own creations. 
Not a perfect object but a perfected man, not a rigid 
definition but a fluid personality, is the end of social- 
istic art. 

The one mind that has penetrated the waste bewilder- 
ment of the industrial world, understood its tendencies, 
and solved the problem of its emancipation, is William 
Morris, whose career as a poet, master workman and 
socialist has been determined by his conversion and sub- 
sequent adherence to the cause of democratic art. Morris' 



THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 95 

great life work has not been his poems but his theory of 
life. The redemption of the toiling masses of men from 
themselves, their environment and their actual oppressors, 
by a life expanding toward an ideal beauty to be realized 
in every activity from the lowest to the highest — this has 
been the end for which the poet labored. His desire to 
return art (by which he meant the pleasure of life) to 
the people explains his abandonment of his early lyrics 
and epics, his espousal of socialism as a means of redemp- 
tion, and his industrial experiments in proof of the easy 
.alliance of beauty and life. 

The propositions of industrial aesthetics may be briefly 
formulated in the following terms : First, beauty and art 
are no mere accidents of human life, which people can 
take or leave as they choose, but a positive necessity of 
concrete living — unless men are content to exist in a man- 
ner less than the highest. Second, beauty is a subjective 
effect and to be defined in terms of pleasure. And the 
highest pleasure is that which arises when an artist is 
given permission to set forth freely in forms that which 
his mind conceives. "That thing," said Morris, "which I 
understand by real art is the expression by man of his 
pleasure in labor." Third, granting the pleasure of life 
to be the essence of beauty, how can beauty be univer- 
sally realized? How but by the association of beauty 
and that which is commonest and nearest, the labor of 
the human hand? Labor is not rightly a preparation for 
living but a consecrated means of living. Labor becomes 
life when it is in the direction of a man's will. Structure 
should arise out of the soul. Decoration is the expression 
of man's pleasure in work, the play of the hand in free 
activity. The pleasure that the fine artist enjoys returns 



96 THE CHANGING ORDER 

to the people when the people in their turn learn to ex- 
press themselves in their daily work with the artist's 
freedom and to the end of self-realization. Then are art 
and labor associated to the consecration of each, and 
modern industrialism is emancipated from its slavish sub- 
jection to a machine and a product. The popularization 
of art involves the two factors, the return of creation to 
that which man must perforce make and the return of 
pleasure to that which man must perforce use. 

The association of art and labor is no new experience 
in the race's history. The life of the people of Japan 
furnishes a convenient illustration of the power of beauty 
to enhance the pleasure of living. Among the Japanese 
the love of art is innate, its production universal. Labor 
of every kind, even to the tilling of a tiny plot of ground 
or the building of their modest homes, is done as much 
to give delight in contemplation as to supply the gross 
needs of daily existence. The common articles of use 
bear the impress of artistic fingers. They are made to 
strike the senses by their beauty as the first effect of their 
use. Care is taken to build the home that it may com- 
mand an ample view of the country side. The charm of 
their towns lies in their location and in the design of 
street and garden and grove. Nature is made subser- 
vient to their aesthetic impulses. Their appropriation 
of the world is not mechanical but personal. When a 
tree blossoms and flowers bloom an ecstacy is felt by the 
farmer, not at the prospective crop but at the immediate 
spectacle. A bird is held in regard for its song and plum- 
age. A mountain is the symbol of the celestial paradise. 
They have exorcised the demon of hurry. They live for 
their ideals, working with loving care upon minutioe 



THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 07 

which seem to the Western mind incompatible with the 
serious business of life, the making fame, wealth, leis- 
ure, luxury. The result is that the poorest endure an 
otherwise burdensome lot with equanimity because of 
the satisfaction beauty affords the finest instincts. As a 
race the Japanese, in the land of flowers, are simple in 
their modes of life, quick in intelligence, gentle in charac- 
ter, elastic in temperament, juvenescent in feeling — a 
race kept ever young by their love of beauty. 

Among European peoples there was a time in the Mid- 
dle Ages when art and labor had their due association. 
That was the short, brilliant period when labor, having 
won its freedom, expended its energies in the erection of 
the Gothic cathedrals. "In the twelfth century," said 
William Morris, recounting the struggle for freedom, 
"the actual handicraftsmen found themselves at last face 
to face with the development of the earlier associations 
of freemen which were the survival from the tribal so- 
ciety of Europe ; in the teeth of these exclusive and aristo- 
cratic municipalities the handicraftsmen had associated 
themselves into guilds of craft, and were claiming their 
freedom from legal and arbitrary oppression and a share 
in the government of the towns ; by the end of the thir- 
teenth century they had conquered the position every- 
where, and within the next fifty or sixty years the gover- 
nors of the free towns were the delegates of the craft 
guilds and all handicraft was included in their associa- 
tions. This period of their triumph, marked amid other 
events by the battle of Courtrai, where the chivalry of 
France turned their backs in flight before the Flemish 
weavers, was the period during which Gothic architec- 
ture reached its zenith." The glory of Gothic architec- 



98 THE CHANGING ORDER 

ture lies in the association of art and labor in construc- 
tion : labor was free, and free labor issued in glorious art. 

In like manner the struggle of the modern world to 
gain its industrial independence is leading directly toward 
artistic constructiveness. Every gain in freedom means 
a step forward in art. The issue of the industrial battle 
is perhaps the greatest in history. For in it are wrapped 
up the possibilities of a universal art. It is not possible 
that the interests of men can be for very long confined 
to the development of the mechanical energies alone. 

The principle of industrial aesthetics, and conspicu- 
ously the canon of the pleasure of life, are fortified and 
proved by the result of scientific investigation into the 
origin of the artistic impulse. Evolutionary aesthetics 
points to a conception of art as the outcome and embodi- 
ment of the freer and higher activities of being. By 
means of the principle of play, first suggested by Schiller, 
but for which in this connection the name of Herbert 
Spencer stands, the origin of art in primitive man is in- 
telligibly explained. Briefly stated, the knowledge pre- 
vails that art had its origin when the race had reached 
that stage of culture that it could rise above mere physi- 
cal necessity and gratify the instincts and feelings just 
dawning into consciousness by engaging in free "play." 
Play, as a form of more or less spontaneous expression, 
implies freedom from physical needs, an excess of life 
functioning, some conscious satisfaction, and a certain 
power of abstraction. When play came to be consciously 
regulated under some principle of order, and conducted 
to the satisfaction of higher instincts and the conveyance 
of the sense of spiritual significance in material things, 
the long process of art began. 



THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 99 

Evolutionary aesthetics agrees with the propositions 
of industrial anesthetics in regard to the primal principle 
of the importance of beauty in life. In play primitive 
man, engaging in an ideal exercise, brought into ac- 
tivity, and therefore into fuller consciousness, the various 
ideal faculties of his being. It would seem that art, 
considered in its aspect of play, is the goal of all life. As 
Schiller says, man "only plays when in the full meaning 
of the term he is man, and he is only completely man 
when he plays." Evolutionary advance is along the line 
of the selection and survival of beauty. The agreement 
of the theories is even closer in respect of the univer- 
sality of the artistic instinct and the corresponding need 
of every human being to become a free creator if he is 
to live the life designed by nature and advance himself 
into higher forms of spiritual godlikeness. The play 
of evolutionary aesthetics is the pleasure of industrial 
aesthetics, and play and pleasure are just so much of 
spiritual significance added to life and labor. 

A third aspect of the general question appears in what 
may be called educational aesthetics, meaning by this 
the theory of beauty that concurs with the principles and 
methods of the new education. The new education dif- 
fers from the old in regard to purpose and means. The 
education of the past has been in a great measure special 
and aristocratic. The feudal system evolved a curriculum 
directed to the shaping of a gentleman, a dignified and 
exalted object, and the gentleman in his turn took care 
to preserve his position by insuring general ignorance on 
the side of the masses and a special culture for himself 
and fellows. The means employed was an exclusive 
school with its classical studies and its formal discipline. 

- 3 



100 THE CHANGING ORDER 

Though social conditions changed from century to cen- 
tury, and the world at large grew slowly democratic, the 
school remained a stronghold of the nobility and retained 
its feudal forms and traditions. Almost to the present 
day the school has educated its pupils intellectually and 
prepared them to live in an aristocracy. It has left them 
selfish and destroyed sympathy and the spirit of good 
will. So far as this education was aesthetic it followed 
the classical canon of culture, the canon of selection and 
refinement. To strive for selection and refinement in an 
age of humanity, to separate men from each other when 
the conditions of social happiness require association, is 
to leave life bare and barren. An education formed on 
the lines and principles of a Greek temple is too narrow, 
perfect, and exclusive to meet the wants of an era of ex- 
pansion. Mutterings of discontent have recently been 
heard from some who recognize the failure of the dogma 
of discipline and who have visions of the future of good 
will. A prominent educator, Mr. Hezekiah Butterworth, 
has recently voiced this feeling of dissatisfaction: "Our 
schools have followed too largely the monarchical idea, 
and too little the plan of self-government, which repre- 
sents the spirit of the Republic. We look out on the 
moral conditions of the people with alarm, and there 
comes to the prophetic souls the strong conviction that we 
must have a new order of universal education — an educa- 
tion that tends to character on the principle that 'power 
lies in the ultimates' — to make a new generation to meet 
the higher demands of the age." The age demands 
character, not merely knowledge or discipline. It de- 
mands a full-rounded personality, capable of responding 
to the myriad appeals of environment, equipped for sen- 



THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 101 

sation, feeling, thought, and conduct. It demands an 
education that shall .ial in its forms and altruistic 

in its motive. The failure of the present mod : urther 

enforced by Mr. Butterworth: "Our present system of 
elementary education does not rise to the moral require- 
ments of the age; it stands toe largely for the develop- 
ment of memory for the purpose of mere money-makir ; 
to the neglect of the nobler spiritual faculties. It toe 
often leaves out the cultivation of the heart and the train- 
ing of the hand, the quickening of conscience and the 
growth of the moral perception. Such a system is not 
education in any large sense; it is what Pestalozzi ca' 
'mere instruction. 5 The education that makes character, 
individual and national, begins with the heart, the con- 
science, and the imagination." Another censure of like 
import has been rendered by Josephine Locke: "Our 
education has been too mathematical and too analytic; 
it has trained the individual for self-preservation at the 
expense of his relationship to his fellows. It has blinded 
him to co-operation with the great law of evolution: vi- 
carious suffering, self-sacrifice. How has it done tins? 
By presenting the studies isolatedly for their own sak, : . 
and by teaching each subject in its immediate details, in 
its Gradgrind facts, by the omission of the aesthetic 
element, by the exaltation of culture for culture's sake, 
by the offering of stimulants to excellence and by giving 
the disciplinary and formal studies precedence over the 
nourishing and informal." There is need, therefore, in 
modern culture of securing some effective means of 
cherishing the ideal within the soul. We need a new 
standard of values. The educational reforms in contem- 
plation provide for the application of the principle of 



102 THE CHANGING ORDER 

self-activity in all lines of development. This involves the 
substitution of character for knowledge, an inward striving 
for an outward accomplishment, an experience for a 
derivation, the exercise of the whole social personality 
for mere intellectual display. As means to secure the 
spiritualization of education the advocates of the new 
theory offer creative or artistic studies in the place of 
formal or disciplinary ones. The child learns by creat- 
ing. The power by which educational activity is carried 
on is imagination. This is the central faculty upon the 
development of which depends the efficiency of the facul- 
ties of observation and judgment, the exercise of the 
reason, the activity of the will, and the responsiveness 
of the moral sympathies. The studies calculated to dis- 
cipline and nourish the imagination are the arts. Art is 
liberation. It is instinct, feeling, spontaneity. It is the 
full activity of the self. Good will lies at the heart. Its 
characteristics are freedom, self-activity, and love. 

Whether the ideal of the new education can be realized 
remains to be seen. Surely the child, modeling a form 
in the pliant clay, affords a happier and more hopeful 
sight than the child learning by rote a printed page. As 
the new movement is the outcome of democracy, we may 
expect its advance with the increase of the democratic 
spirit. The sesthetical principle involved is the same as 
that presented by science and the new industrialism, the 
principle of play. May it not be that through the opera- 
tion of evolution, the struggles of industrialism to se- 
cure the freedom of the workers, and the efforts of the 
school to reach the hearts and souls of its pupils a new 
aesthetic man will rise to grace the later ages of the 
world ? 



THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 103 

Besides establishing the canon of pleasure for the cre- 
ative artist, democracy has given formulation to a second 
though allied principle of aesthetics for the use of the 
critic: the canon of correspondency or the canon of the 
characteristic. With the development of the modern 
spirit questions respecting the nature of beauty have 
again arisen. Does beauty lie in the right relation of the 
parts of a composition or in inherency and wholes? Is 
it something artificial and conventional, or something 
attached to vital functioning? Is it conserved by obedi- 
ence to the aristocratic canon of order, or to the demo- 
cratic canon of the characteristic? "My opinion," said 
Walt Whitman, "has long been that for New World ser- 
vice our ideas of beauty need to be radically changed and 
made anew for to-day's New World purposes and finer 
standards." Sooner or later the New World, for pur- 
poses of its own, will construct a complete system of 
aesthetics from the point of view of character or in- 
herency. The feeling for beauty may be said,, indeed, 
to be wide as life itself. Some stages of this expansion 
of interest may be seen in the never-ending revolt against 
the restrictions imposed by the classical canon of order, 
with the result of inaugurating at certain times vast and 
far-reaching revolutionary movements in the direction 
of the romantic. Theoretical stages of this change are 
discoverable in the growth of the term "beauty" in point 
of its inclusiveness. Up to the eighteenth century the 
term referred almost exclusively to that which was appro- 
priately designed and ordered. But nature exhibited 
aspects harsh and terrible and uncouth, which neverthe- 
less had interest to men. To explain human sympathy 
with that which was not well ordered, the theory of the 



104 THE CHANGING ORDER 

sublime was developed, at first without relation to the 
theory of beauty, but later falling within its scope. At 
the same time the theory of the ugly was broached, the 
ugly being regarded as the negative of the beautiful. 
But recent aesthetics understands that the ugly, by be- 
coming characteristic, may be made a subordinate ele- 
ment in the effects of beauty, and so the theory is ab- 
sorbed in the larger conception. 

From a wider historical and philosophical point of view 
the stages of advance may be indicated by reference to 
the development of an important principle of thought. 
The Greeks were held at the stage of naturalistic monism, 
and, finding unity in external nature and in form, the 
aesthetic canon of order in variety sufficed the needs of 
their philosophy. The Middle Ages, under the influence 
of Christianity, advanced to the stage of romantic dual- 
ism, a vast gulf being fixed between an infinite ideal of 
perfection and any possible attainment in a finite world. 
The philosophy so deepened its knowledge with respect 
to the universe within that the mind learned to rely upon 
a symbol for the expression of its thought, without re- 
gard to the formal quality of the means. Thus far no 
adequate synthesis had been reached. The Greeks found 
unity in nature through defective idealism. The Middle 
Ages arrived at unity in the infinite through an imperfect 
sense of the finite. The last and modern stage of spiritual 
monism represents on the one hand the closure of the 
gulf between form and content, under the combined 
forces of idealistic philosophy and monistic science, 
which together reveal the immanent reason in both the 
world without and the world within, and on the other 
hand the attainment of a new svnthesis of ideal in form. 



THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE I } 

A form idealized has the unity neither in the form r tot 
in the idea, but in an idealized form that is different frc 
either form or idea; it is form made abstract; it is idea 
made concrete. The racial expression of this philo- 
sophic synthe overable in the grc big ses se 
the solidarity ;iety which is manifestly increasing 
through the extension of individual importance. 1 
artistic outcome of the process is an art that does not aim 
primarily at a beautiful form, but at the most adequate 
expression of some particular content. The correspond- 
ing critical theory is one that scrutinizes form for its 
meaning- and idea for adequate expression. Philosophic 
monism, social democracy, characteristic art, and the 
corresponding aesthetics are parts of one stupendous 
social movement. 

According to the canon of the characteristic, beauty 
lies in significance. Beauty comes into being when a 

nificant content is duly expr^; "Which is the rr. a r e 

beautiful," asked Millet, "a straight tree or a crook 
tree' And he answered forthwith: "Whichever is the 
most in place. The beautiful is that which is in place." 
This describes the music of Wagner, and of other ro- 
mantic composers ; the beauty of whose music does r t 
rest in tone or relation of tone, but in the adequacy 
of expression to meaning. The form is beautiful in 
far as it has been absorbed in mind and feeling. As the 
middle term between form and content is the artist who 
gives the idea to the form, as no content can get inf. a 
form without first being in the man, art has come to . 
defined as "the utterance of all that life contair But 

life must be sincere. Beauty abides in creation on the 
artist's part, in re-creation on the observer's part. The 



106 THE CHANGING ORDER 

admission of the personal element carries with it the 
justification of artistic egotism and even lawlessness; 
the real law, however, is not outer but inner. The ugly 
takes a place in the synthesis if it can be flushed with 
meaning. The grotesque gargoyles of a Gothic cathedral 
are directly related to the creed which the cathedral ex- 
hibits ; they have the same right there as the figures of 
angels. The way is opened for the play of suggestions 
and associations. Formal art is displayed to the senses 
and to the logical intellect ; characteristic art quickens the 
imagination and throws the observer back upon his own 
power to deal artistically with realities. It has multiple 
standards, inasmuch as the possible relations between 
form and idea are infinite. One perfection in art does 
not destroy any other perfection any more than one eye- 
sight countervails another eyesight. The classical standards 
are not destroyed, provided the idea is of such a nature as 
to require the abstraction of form for its presentation. 
Further, characteristic art is often indeterminate in value. 
It is beautiful to one who can make it so. More than 
ordinary demands are made, therefore, upon the critic 
who would realize the unity of art that depends upon 
meaning. Schlegel makes this clear in discussing the 
higher unity of a play: "The separate parts of a work 
of art are all subservient to one common aim — namely, 
to produce a joint impression on the mind. Here, there- 
fore, the unity lies in a single sphere, in the feeling or in 
the reference to ideas. This is all one, for the feeling as 
far as it is not merely sensual and passive, is our sense 
or organ for the Infinite which forms itself into ideas for 
us. Far, therefore, from rejecting the law of a perfect 
unity in tragedy, as unnecessary, I require a deeper, 



THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 107 

more intrinsic, and more mysterious unity than that 
with which most critics are satisfied." 



III. 



Further considerations of the canon of pleasure, play, 
and the characteristic will lead to a constructive defini- 
tion of democratic criticism. 

The test of good art in a democracy must be its ca- 
pacity to satisfy some universal requirement in human 
nature. Democratic art is to conquer in the plane of the 
common and general. What, then, is the paramount 
human wish, the realization of which brings happiness, 
the denial of which causes despair? I recall a drawing 
by William Blake, entitled "I Want," which represents 
a man standing at the foot of a ladder that reaches from 
the earth to the moon, up which he longs to climb. Is it 
the moon we all want ? anything so far distant ? Is it not 
something nearer at hand, as near as hands and feet, life 
itself? I do not mean that we all seek to escape death, 
but that we yearn here and now for full abounding ener- 
gized being. As the poet says : 

'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
life, not death, for which we pant; 
More life, and fuller, that I want. 

We want the fulfillment of the promise of every 
faculty. We want the greatest possible health of body, 
activity of mind, glow of emotions, play of imagination, 
force of will, vitality of character. We want the thou- 
sand possible streams of thought and will-impulse set 
freely flowing within us. Whence comes the satisfac- 



108 THE CHANGING ORDER 

tion of the want we all know to be universal ? Where but 
from the source and fount of life, from art in which life 
has abundantly entered — life conceived after the heart's 
desire, life made not to the end of good taste alone, or 
of knowledge alone, but involving the whole of nature to 
the end of universal progress? Said Goethe in the midst 
of the waste and bewilderment of his time: "Art still 
has truth ; take refuge there." Art in its entirety is the 
expression of man's being in its entirety. 

A perfect response to art requires the activity in the 
observer of those faculties of being to which the artist 
has made his appeal. He who is unwilling or incapable 
of yielding the sympathetic response fails in his inter- 
pretation just to the extent of his denial. The best 
student of art is the one who is alive at most points, who 
can accept the challenge of the artist to the contest of 
thought and feeling, who in his own being is as active as 
the artist himself. 

Before venturing upon a constructive definition we 
may inquire what is wanting in the methods of "good 
taste" and of scientific interpretation, when considered 
from the point of view of life's freedom and power and 
pleasure in play. 

The criticism of taste is manifestly inadequate to our 
modern democratic needs. It was a method that came 
into vogue during periods of aristocracy, when men were 
more concerned about the manner of their speech and 
dress than the matter of their thought and character. It 
is a method essentially narrow, exclusive, the special 
instrument of a literary coterie and professional class. It 
is not, and cannot ever be universal. Democracy calls 
less for the fine phrase, the selected gracious ornament, 



THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 109 

more for the large view, the inner character, the grand 
personality that betokens universal life itself. The criti- 
cism of taste has, however, one important feature: it 
contains ideas of the best, it has standards of the right. 
Even a democracy wants to know the best things thought 
and said in the world. The criticism that does not give 
rank to works of art fails in its important mission. 
When art comes to the judgment of the people, upon 
what grounds will rank be given ? On the ground of the 
"grand manner?" or on the ground of the "grand" per- 
sonality? Evidently works of art will be adjusted accord- 
ing to their capacity to satisfy and develop personality. 
One of the wisest utterances ever made in criticism is the 
dictum of Wordsworth concerning poetry: "If it con- 
tributes to the pleasures of sense, that is one degree; if 
to the higher pleasures, its rank rises as the whole per- 
sonality of the reader is called into action." Such a stand- 
ard is inner and not outer. Then books that read well in 
parlors will pass with difficulty in the open air, in streets 
and workshops. With the standard of "good taste" a 
democracy has little to do. 

The scientific process has the advantage of being more 
universal. At least it is dependent only upon ability to 
handle the method, and not upon culture or refinement. 
It may be employed by any one who has intelligence; it 
has been used by those who have only patience and in- 
dustry. The objection to induction is that in remaining 
objective scientific criticism omits from its results fully 
one-half, often the whole, of the artistic effect, the sub- 
jective — that is, the response which the observer in his 
own creative capacity gives to the call of the artist. Pure 
induction does not allow for personal absorption or pro- 



110 THE CHANGING ORDER 

vide for individual associations. It is afraid of enthu- 
siasms. It denies any necessity of vital response. So 
long as men remain moral and sentient, there can be no 
disinterested endeavor to find the truth of art. In scientific 
criticism an attitude too exclusively intellectual is taken 
toward that which is a product of the whole man as a 
thinking, emotional, imaginative, and moral being: 
"Love, hope, fear, faith," says Browning, "make hu- 
manity." It is as Edward Carpenter said to the moon : 

I know very well that when the astronomers look at you through 
their telescopes they see only an aged and wrinkled body; 

But though they measure your wrinkles never so carefully, they 
do not see you personal and close, 

As you disclosed yourself among the chimney tops each night 
to the eyes of a child, 

When you thought no one was looking. 

Research, it seems, is too analytic; detaching form 
from idea and idea from form, it destroys the synthesis 
of reality and life. Science has imperfect standards, 
weeds and flowers having the same value under its 
scrutiny. While immeasurably valuable as a means, the 
scientific understanding of art can never become the end 
of knowledge. As was finely said by Professor Blackie : 
"Not from any fingering induction of external details, but 
from the inspiration of the Almighty, cometh all true 
understanding in matters of beauty. All high art comes 
directly from within, and its laws are not to be proved by 
any external collection of facts but by the emphatic as- 
sertion of the divine vitality from which they proceed." 

To close with a definition of criticism from the stand- 
point of democratic aesthetics it may be asserted ( I ) the 
effects of beauty depend upon the presentation of that 



THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE 111 

which stimulates, within the limits of pleasurable action, 
any or all of the faculties of being, the senses, the intellect, 
the emotions, the imagination, and the will. (2) Criti- 
cism is the statement of an effect, or the wording of the 
result of the vital contact of a work of art upon an ener- 
gizing personality. 

Democratic criticism includes in its scope both the ob- 
jective and the subjective. It takes account of the me- 
dium in space and time and also of the subjective re- 
sponse. It requires personal absorption. It permits the 
fullest play of those vital associations which are differ- 
ent in every person. The end of its work is not "good 
taste," not knowledge, but life and character. 



AN INSTANCE OF CONVERSION: TOLSTOI. 

Leo Tolstoi, with respect to his personal history, may 
be said to describe a series of contraries. Thus he is a 
Russian opposed to Muscoviteism, a revolutionist who 
offers no resistance to evil, a follower of Christ who 
abjures Christianity, an artist who mocks at beauty, an 
author who disbelieves in copyright, a noble who 
preaches brotherhood, a man of over seventy years who 
says he is but thirty-two. 

The explanation of this strange and complex history is 
found in the fact of his spiritual conversion in 1873. 
Before that date he was a Russian count, an atheist, a 
nihilist, an artist of the aristocratic school. But, turning 
from his past, and accepting Christianity in the terms of 
the Sermon on the Mount, it was not long before he 
left the palace for the fields and began to write accord- 
ing to a new definition of art. In Christianity and 
what may be called Peasantism his whole life is now 
contained. Christ gives him the principle of the new 
life, the peasant shows how it may be accomplished. 

In conversation with Henry Fisher, Tolstoi recently 
gave the following account of his "new birth": "It's 
all so lifelike, I might have experienced it yesterday: 
A beautiful Spring morning, God's birds singing and 
His insects humming in the grass. My horse, tired of 
the great burden which I, brutelike, imposed upon his 
back, stood still under the wooden image of the Christ 
at a cross-road. I was so absorbed in the contempla- 



AN INSTANCE OF CONVERSION : TOLSTOI 113 

tion of the scene that I indulged the beast, allowing 
the reins to rest upon his neck while he rummaged fot 
young grass and leaves. By and by a group of moujik 
pilgrims intruded upon my resting place and without 
knowing what I was doing I listened to their prayers. 
It was the most wholesome medicine ever administered 
to a doubting soul. The simplicity and ignorance of 
the poor moujik, the confiding moujik, the ever hopeful 
moujik, touched my heart. I came from under that cross 
a new man. When I led my beast of burden — God's 
creature, like myself — away, I knew that the kingdom 
of God is within us and that the literal interpretation of 
the Sermon on the Mount should be the crowning rule 
of a Christian's life." From this it appears that a peasant 
was the agent of Tolstoi's redemption. And Peasantism, 
working on in the heart of the man, disrupting his 
old ideas, carried forward to completion the transfor- 
mation that began with a spiritual conversion. To pre- 
sent the whole history of Tolstoi it would be necessary, 
therefore, to consider the play and interaction of these 
two forces. It is possible, however, to separate them 
in thought and to trace the line of Peasantism inde- 
pendently. 

Specifically, Peasantism displayed its effect in Tol- 
stoi in two ways. It determined the spirit of his phi- 
losophy of life and formulated in particular one of 
his few practical precepts for conduct, and it furnished 
him a standard of judgment with reference to which 
he criticised the current forms of religion, government 
and art. 

Consider the temper of his practical philosophy. By 
way of negation he has said, "Offend no one," "Take 



114 THE CHANGING ORDER 

no oath," "Resist not evil." For personal commands 
he wrote, "Be pure," "Love mankind." Then, with 
the full force of Peasantism upon him, he said, "Do thou 
labor." This precept dates from the writing of "Anna 
Karenina," which appeared in 1875. From the time that 
Levine saved himself from pessimism by dwelling a 
day in the fields with the mowers, Tolstoi has proclaimed 
the doctrine of labor. Then take into view his social crit- 
icisms. The ideas advanced to condemn the present or- 
der are those of an average respectable, intelligent 
peasant. It is as if a peasant spoke. Is it not, indeed, 
a peasant's face that confronts us in his pictures? It 
seems that a man, born out of his due place in the 
palace, found in the fields at length the place to which he 
was destined by his very nativity — a place in nature and 
among realities. 

To make this latter critical attitude altogether clear, 
one feature only of his Peasantism may be selected for 
exposition, his ideas on art. 

A brief historical survey will be sufficient to clear 
the ground for Tolstoi's definition of art. For about 
two centuries now art has been defined in terms of 
beauty. The theory of art as beauty arose among the 
wealthy and cultured classes of Europe in the eighteenth 
century, its scientific formulation being due to a German 
metaphysician, Baumgarten, who flourished about 1750. 
From that time to this the field of art has been narrowing 
and refining, the artist withdrawing more and more from 
life, and within his special realm developing technique 
and abstracting form, until what is called the fine arts 
alone receive recognition, and among fine artists only 
the most dextrous to manipulate form win the plau&ifc 



AN INSTANCE OF CONVERSION : TOLSTOI 115 

of the cultured world. For two centuries, in short, art 
has been developing along aristocratic lines. Criticism, 
likewise, has been called to serve the requirements of 
a society devoted to pleasure. The decision as to what 
is good art and what not has been undertaken by the 
"finest nurtured." The natural result of the refining 
process has been the creation of an art from the enjoy- 
ment of which the great masses of men are excluded. 

Now Tolstoi is one of a small company of men who 
perceive the necessity of a new order of art. The 
spirit of the new day is universality. A culture that 
does not carry with it the whole people is doomed to 
failure. And this universality is to be gained not through 
the extension of aristocratic culture among the people, 
not through the education of the masses in the philoso- 
phy of the classes, but through a new philosophy and a 
new criticism that shall meet the demands of a democratic 
society and result in an art that shall be in its own nature 
universal in character. I do not see that democracy 
means either leveling up or leveling down; it means 
life on wholly new terms. The old art will be destroyed, 
root and branch, and a new art rise that shall start from 
the broad basis of the people's will. For the old art 
is based on privilege ; the new art will not be simply the 
extension of privilege, but the utter rejection of privi- 
lege. Whitman gives what he well calls "the sign of 
democracy" in the following sentence: "I will accept 
nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on 
the same terms." 

In harmony with this thought, Tolstoi seeks to start 
a new definition of art: "To evoke in oneself a feeling 
one has once experienced, and having evoked it in one- 



116 THE CHANGING ORDER 

self, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds 
or forms, expressed in words, so to transmit that feel- 
ing that others may experience the same feeling — this 
is the activity of art." "Art is a human activity, consisting 
in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain 
external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived 
through, and that other people are infected by these feel- 
ings, and also experience them." Or, in other words, 
"Art is the infection by one man of another with the feel- 
ings experienced by the infector." 

This may be called the definition of Peasantism. Ob- 
serve its grounds. It puts aside the conception of beauty 
altogether and defines art in terms of experience. That 
is, it ceases to consider art as a means of pleasure, but 
as one of the conditions of human life. Art, then, is one 
of the two organs of human progress. By words we ex- 
change thoughts ; by art we interchange feelings. Thus 
considered, art is primarily a means of union among men, 
indispensable for the life and progress toward well- 
being of individuals and of humanity. The idea of excel- 
lence in such an art is not exclusiveness of feeling acces- 
sible to some, but universality, not obscurity and complex- 
ity, but clearness and simplicity. Its motives will be 
sociological, that is, moral and altruistic. It will draw 
from the primal sources of religion. 

The value of contemporary art, when judged from 
the ideal of universality, seems small. The experiences 
of the ruling classes, as they have come to record in art, 
amount to hardly more than three — the feeling of pride, 
the feeling of sexual desire and the feeling of the 
weariness of life. Upon these themes poetry especially 
has played endless changes. But these are by no means 



AN INSTANCE OF CONVERSION: TOLSTOI 117 

universal feelings — they are those of an idle pleasure- 
loving aristocracy. Before such art the peasant stands 
bewildered. He has no attachment to it. All his own 
rich life is unreflected there. And lest it be thought that 
the experiences of the peasant are barren and uninter- 
esting, Tolstoi insists that the world of labor is rich in 
subject materials for art. He points to the endlessly 
varied forms of labor; the dangers connected with that 
labor on sea and land ; the laborer's migrations, his inter- 
course with his employers, overseers and companions, 
and with men of other religions and other nationalities; 
his struggles with nature and with wild animals, his 
association with the domestic animals; his work in the 
forests, the plains, the fields, the gardens, the orchards; 
his intercourse with his wife and children, not only as 
with people near and dear to him, but as with co- 
workers and helpers in labor, replacing him in time of 
need ; his concern in all economic questions, not as matters 
of display or discussion, but as problems of life for him- 
self and family; his pride and self-suppression, and 
service to others; his pleasure or refreshment; and, 
above all, his devotion to religion. 

But to set off the value of one life against that of 
another is no part of Tolstoi's definition. The judgment 
of a peasant is no more to be respected than the judgment 
of the "finest nurtured." What the new theory shows is 
the shifting of the aesthetic ground from what is special 
to what is universal, from what is form to what is ex- 
perience. 

To illustrate Tolstoi's definition by reference to con- 
crete instances of popular art, is not easy. Tolstoi's 
own illustrations seem trivial in comparison with the 



118 THE CHANGING ORDER 

great works of the past that may be mentioned to prove 
the aristocratic refinement of beauty. And, of course, 
the simple explanation is that a mature illustration of 
popular art does not exist. The rise of the people is a 
phenomenon of the present century. Whereas for 
centuries the field of art has been held by the artists of 
aristocracy. Today the professional artists are every- 
where on the side of tradition. And criticism for the most 
part upholds the standards of culture. Outside of Millet's 
portraiture of the peasant laborer and Whitman's poems 
exploiting the average man, one does not know where to 
go for a large illustration of an art that springs from 
popular feeling. One painting at the World's Fair 
may, however, be mentioned. This was a picture record- 
ing an almost universal experience, the breaking of 
home ties, and few stood before that picture whose 
eyes did not wet with tears. As might be expected, this 
painting is pointed to by the professional artist as an 
instance of bad art, yet it was very generally applauded 
by the people. Art, says Tolstoi, is an infection — that 
picture is infectious. 

From many signs it appears that this is the moment 
of transition. All the features that accompany tran- 
sition are exhibited in the works of Tolstoi himself 
as well as in the works of kindred spirits, John 
Ruskin and William Morris. These men, with respect 
to "fine writing," illustrate almost the best that can be 
done in the creation of works springing from the sense 
of beauty. But catching glimpses of the new thought 
and becoming advocates of a new definition of art, they 
gave up art on the old terms of exclusion and labored 
in the interests of the people. J This change of face is 



AN INSTANCE OP CONVERSION : TOLSTOI 119 

not due to "perverted vision," as their critics would have 
us believe, but to the new revelation they have caught 
from the mountain tops of their observation. With this 
change of attitude, moreover, the inconsistencies with 
which these authors are charged could hardly be avoided. 
One may not wish to defend inconsistency, but in their 
case it is not difficult to explain. A river that meets 
the incoming tides from the sea is uncertain during the 
hour of transition whether to resist its own traditions 
or strive to overcome the new tendency. Would it not 
be strange if, even when in the grasp of the sea, it did not 
have memories of its flow through the upper meadows 
and be taken with a sudden ardor to reassert its past? 



A TYri 7 OF TRANSITION: WILLIAM MORRIS. 

I. 

The socialists of Hammersmith were accustomed in 

former days to meet weekly at Kelmscott House, the 
London home of Mr. Morris on the Upper Mall. An old 
carriage house served as a place of gathering-. Frequent- 
ly at these conferences. Mr. Morris would act as chair- 
man. Sometimes he would speak. One night, he had 
spoken with more than usual sadness upon the hope of 
his life, and in closing he uttered these words: 
"Neighbors, it is peace that we need that we may live 
and work in hope and joy.'* Leaving the hall. I stood 
with a friend for a half hour beneath the elm trees, look- 
ing out over the river. The tide was flowing quietly to 
the sea. A light mist obscured the opposite shore. The 
river, the passing boats, the bridge, the city beyond, 
were all toned down to the common grayness. Xeither 
of us spoke a word. The peace of the evening seemed 
to mingle with the words we had heard and give direction 
to our thoughts. Then, near at hand, we heard the voice 
of the poet saying : 

"So with this Earthly Paradise it is, 

If ye will read uqght tad pardon me, 
"Wbr strive tc build a shadowy isle of bliss, 
Midmcs: the bearing oi the steely sea. 
Where tossed about all hearts of men must- be." 



A TYPE OF TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 121 

II. 

William Morris, master-workman, poet and socialist, 
was born March 24, 1834, at Walthamstow, a village in 
Essex not far from London. He was the eldest-born of 
a family of nine. His father, of Welsh ancestry, was an 
enterprising and successful business man of the city. 
At Walthamstow, William went to a school kept by Dr. 
Greig, a Scotchman, who described his pupil as a rollick- 
ing boy, full of the vigor of life. At this period he was 
said to have been extraordinarily active with his hands, 
an omniverous reader, but not taking kindly to discipline. 
After the death of Mr. Morris in 1848, the family moved 
to Marlborough, where William attended the college and 
began to take an interest in art and archaeology. He 
went "steeple-chasing," made rubbings of memorial 
brasses, and became an adept in the Gothic. In 1852, 
he entered Oxford at Exeter College, matriculating for 
Holy Orders. At that time, after long quiescent conser j 
vatism, the University was in the midst of a strenuous 
mediaeval revival, which was fostered on the one hand 
by the Tractarian College of Newman, and on the other 
by the artistic guild of the pre-Raphaelite Brothers. 
Under the influence of Rossetti and other leaders of the 
mediaeval reaction, Morris, with his college chum, E. 
Burne- Jones, became a convert to romance. He passed 
his college days in comparative idleness, yielding himself 
to the enchantments of Oxford— ; hat Oxford that ever 
summons its devotees to mark the lustre of ancient days. 
Wholly aristocratic in his tastes and sympathies, un- 
troubled by any rumors of the inhuman conditions of 
the Great Black Country just then becoming rife, he lived 



122 THE CHANGING ORDER 

in entire isolation, accepting from his environment only 
the pleasurable contact of chosen companions. One en- 
thusiasm only counted towards his later evolution — an 
interest in Ruskin, which was aroused on reading "The 
Stones of Venice," and maintained throughout the poet's 
life till his tribute was paid in printing from the Ketm- 
scott Press, Ruskin's essay "On the Nature of the Gothic." 
In 1856, Morris and a few other poets and painters 
started a monthly magazine, called The Oxford and Cam- 
bridge Magazine. Like its prototype, The Germ, of 1850, 
the organ of the pre-Raphaelites, it had an existence of 
a year. To this magazine Rossetti contributed some of 
his finest poems, including "The Burden of Ninevah" 
and a revised form of "The Blessed Damozel." Morris, 
the financial sponsor of the magazine, and its most active 
contributor, wrote for successive numbers a series of 
mediaeval romances, having such titles as "A Dream," 
"Gertha's Lovers," "The Hollow Land," and "Golden 
Wings." Each story, as might be imagined from the 
titles, is conducted with an artist's love of color and 
with a poet's imagery, and all are steeped in the spirit 
of a time "long ago." 

"Long ago," one begins, "there was a land, never mind where, 
or when, a fair country and good to live in, rich with wealth of 
golden corn, beautiful with many woods, watered by great rivers 
and pleasant trickling streams; moreover, one extremity of it was 
bounded by the washing of the purple waves, and the other by the 
solemn watchfulness of the purple mountains." 

There are a few poems in the volume also by Morris. 
"Summer Dawn" is as beautiful as anything he after- 
ward wrote, and is touched by that solemn grayness that 
colors so many of his poems. 



A TYPE OP TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 123 

"Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips, 
Think but one thought of me up in the stars, 
The summer night waneth, the morning light slips, 
Faint and grey, 'twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the 

closed bars 
That are patiently waiting there for the dawn: 
Patient and colorless, though Heaven's gold 
Waits to float through them along with the sun. 
Far out in the meadows, above the young corn, 
The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold 
The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dun; 
Through the long twilight, they pray for the dawn, 
Round the lone house in the midst of the corn. 
Speak but one word to me over the corn, 
Over the tender bow'd locks of the corn." 

During a memorable journey afoot through France, 
in company with Burne-Jones, while the spell of mighty 
cathedrals was upon him, he decided to abandon his ca- 
reer in the church and devote his life to the service of 
art. Leaving Oxford, his next step was to enter the 
office of Mr. G. E. Street, a London architect, famed for 
his Gothic restorations, and as the builder of that com- 
posite structure in the Strand known as the Law Courts. 
Here he worked for nearly a year. Then, compelled by 
Rossetti who demanded that all who could not be buyers 
of pictures should become painters of pictures, he di- 
verged to the study of painting and artistic decoration, 
continuing his study of the Gothic he had learned to 
love so well, doubtless building in fancy a house with 
strange towers and quaint gables for each lady and lover 
that thronged the avenues of his mind, without losing, 
however, his love of architecture which he always re- 



124 THE CHANGING ORDER 

garded as a co-operative art — an art not merely of build- 
ing but of furnishing and decorations.* 

In 1857, he was associated with Jones, Rossetti, Prinsep, 
and others in painting upon the walls of the Oxford 
Union Debating Hall, the frescoes, now but dimly visi- 
ble, illustrating the Arthuriar Romance. The subject 
treated by Morris was Sir Palomides' jealousy of Sir 
Tristram and the fair Isulte, a story that seemed to at- 
tract him by reason of its sadness. His first volume of 
poems, "The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems," 
was published in 1858, under the interest awakened by 
Tennyson's and Southey's studies of the Arthurian 
period. Such delicacy of sentiment, such sense of 
color, such realization of an evanished people, had not 
been known before in England. In comparison with 
Tennyson, Morris is a veritable child of the middle ages. 
He writes of Arthur as a contemporary, seemingly hav- 
ing strayed by accident into the land of Victoria, viewing 
it as might an antiquarian ; while Tennyson is essentially 
a subject of his queen, and pays tribute to"that old king" as 
a troubadour alien or much belated. Morris at this period 
might have said with Lamb : "Hang posterity, I'm going 
to write for antiquity." The influence of Rossetti and of 
Browning is distinctly marked in this early volume. 
The general effect is that of the painter, but "The Judg- 
ment of God," that brings before us the actual scene 
with startling vividness, reads quite like one of Brown- 



"A true architectural work is a building duly provided with 
all necessary furniture, decorated with all due ornament, accord- 
ing to the use, quality, and dignity of the building, from mere 
mouldings or abstract lines, to the great epical works of sculpture 
and painting, which, except as decoration of the nobler forms ot 
such buildings, can not be produced at all." 



A TYPE OF TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 125 

ing's dramatic lyrics. There are poems also that in 
melody and imagery are reminiscent of Poe. But withal 
it bore the unmistakable marks of original genius. Of 
it Swinburne spoke the final word: "Upon no piece of 
work in the world was the impress of native character 
ever more distinctly stamped, more deeply branded. It 
needed no exceptional acuteness of ear or eye to see or 
hear that this poet held of none, stole from none, clung 
to none, as tenant, or as beggar, or as thief." It was then 
prophesied that Morris would prove a "poet whom poets 
will love." 

In i860 Morris, having married and desirous of a 
home, built the famous Red House on the outskirts of 
London in the midst of an orchard, and served his 
apprenticeship to handicraft by designing and executing 
the interior decoration and furniture of the house. So 
that by the next year he was ready to join with Madox 
Brown, E. Burne- Jones, Rossetti, Philip Webb and a few 
others, all artists with the exception of Faulkner, in 
forming an art firm with the intent of designing and 
manufacturing stained-glass windows, mosaics, wall- 
papers, artistic furniture and general household decora- 
tions. The distinguishing mark of these artists was their 
conviction of the honor of labor and duty of thorough- 
ness. They were gifted with a love of order and grace 
and filled with a deep sense of the need of beauty in 
human life. To join art to labor, to add pleasure to things 
of common use, was the purpose of this company. After 
varying fortune, but not until after they had initiated a 
genuine revolution in the industrial arts, the firm dis- 
solved in 1875, the work to be conducted henceforth 
under Morris's own management. One result of the ex- 



126 THE CHANGING ORDER 

reriment. not particularly counted on. was the educa- 
..;:: Morris himself received through coming in contact 
with certain stern realities of living. The plan of monas- 
tic brotherhcv; conceived and zealously labored for in 
the old college days, was forever abandoned. From this 
time a socialism," innate in his nature, became promi- 
nent 

The manufactory that Morris finally established was 
located at Merton Abbey. It is a village on the Thames, 
far enough from London that nature still lingers in its 
environs, and the birds find room for joyful song. The 
very name of the place is suggestive of a mediaeval 
-kshop. In the twelfth century Gilbert Xorman, 
Sheriff of Surrey, built here a monaster}* for canons of 
the order of Saint Austin. It was patronized by Stephen 
and Matilda and endowed with rich gifts. In 1236 there 
was held within its walls., a parliament which enacted the 
"'Statures :: Merton." wherein the English nobles replied 
to the prelates : ' YVe will not change the laws of En- 
gland.*' On a soil thus early dedicated to liberty, this 
experiment in free labor was conducted. 

The place was chosen from a special sense of fitre ss. 
I remember, now many years after the time of my visits. 
the exact look of the scene. An old mansion, half draped 
with trees and hidden in shrubbery stood by the road- 
side at the edge of the village. Behind the house, under 
the great elms were grouped the low and unpretentious 
buildings of the facton*. From the neighboring gardens 
came an odor of grass and roses. The air was tumultu- 
ous with the seengs of blackbirds and thrushes. Crows 
cawed in the far elms. At one side, the slow waters 
of the Wandel, gathered here into a lily-covered pond, 



A TYPE OF TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 127 

was coaxing a mill wheel, green with moss, lazily to turn. 
Willows grew along the banks of the stream and bent 
down over it ; willows and sky were reflected in the sur- 
face of the water. Over all there was a sense of sunny 
summer. The scene told of sympathy and loving har- 
mony with nature. There was no air of the factory, 
no clang of machinery, no dust, no haste or distraction. 
Within the buildings men and women were at work weav- 
ing at looms, dyeing and printing cloths, and putting 
together windows. 

In the designing room was Mr. Morris himself, half- 
finished sketches, some bold cartoons from the hand of 
Burne-Jones, were scattered about the room. Morris 
was dressed as usual in a plain suit of blue serge and 
flannel. He was short of stature, but robust, and full of 
the most restless energy. His dress and rolling walk gave 
him the aspect of a sailor. The features of his face were 
large and rugged, but full-blooded, luminous, and well 
modeled. A kindly poet's expression was given by 
the filmed and rather inexpressive eyes and by the mobile 
and delicately shaped mouth beneath the grey beard. 
His head was covered with curly grey hair, which he 
brushed back from his forehead with his hand as he 
leaned to his work. One felt in the presence of a vital 
personality, who was in love with labor and all the life 
of the world. I was told of his extraordinarily busy and 
laborius life. Upon all the arts of the hand he had work- 
ed with utmost patience and devotion. He had taught 
himself wood engraving by cutting the blocks himself 
andmanuscriptillumination by copying the pages of an- 
cient books. He had learned carving, weaving, tapestry 
work and embroidery. He had studied the art of dyeing, 



128 THE CHANGING ORDER 

the making of stained glass, tiles, and cloth fabrics. 
These arts he practised with an amount of labor almost 
incredible. When asked how he accomplished so much 
he answered it was easy ; he wrote at night and worked 
at his shops by day. And, while he practised, his mes- 
sage to the world was announced with equal ardor. 

In speech, when aroused by his theme, Morris was 
rapid, nervous, and often tumultuous and uncontrolled. 
For thirty years he claimed for art a place in common 
labor. He plead first of all for simplicity of life. From 
simplicity of life would rise up a longing for beauty 
and artistic creation, which can only be satisfied by mak- 
ing beauty and art a very part of the labor of every man 
who produces. Labor, he argued, is not a preparation 
for living, it is our very life. And the rewards of 
labor? The reward of creation; the wages, Morris said, 
which God gets. Art comes back most to the artist. 
Everything made by man has a form, and that form is 
either beautiful or ugly. The one gives pleasure ; the 
other is a weariness. Decoration is simply the expres- 
sion of man's pleasure in successful labor ; it is the color 
of the work. The true incentive to happy and useful 
labor is, then, the pleasure in the work itself. And the 
price of pleasure? Simply permission to the workman 
to put his own intelligence and enthusiasm into whatever 
he is fashioning; simply permission to make his hands 
set forth his mind and soul. Only then is labor sancti- 
fied, because then it is in the direction of a man's life. 
A structure should rise out of the soul. Order, or mean- 
ing, is the moral quality of structure. Make matter ex- 
press a meaning, and the worker becomes a moral master. 
We must, therefore, travel back from the machine to 



A TYPE OF TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 129 

the human. For men must "prove their living souls 
against the notion that they live in you or under you, 
O Wheels." The machine, the great achievement of the 
nineteenth century, which promised to relieve our drudg- 
ery — has it or has it not increased our burdens? The 
wonderful inventions which in the hands of far-seeing 
men might be used to minimize the labor of the many 
seem only used for the enrichment of their owners. 

With some such logic, Morris reverted in his concep- 
tions of an ideal future, to the traditions of labor in 
operation in the middle ages, when the human mean- 
ing wrapped up in the term "hand-made" was well known, 
when the handicraftsman took pride in his work : 

"Let us think of the mighty and lovely architecture of me- 
diaeval Europe, of the buildings raised before Commerce had put 
the coping stone on the edifice of tyranny by the discovery that 
fancy, imagination, sentiment, the joy of creation and the hope 
of fair fame are marketable articles too precious to be allowed to 
men who have not the money to buy them, to mere handicraftsmen 
and day laborers. Let us remember there was a time when men 
had pleasure in their daily work, but yet as to other matters hoped 
for light and freedom, even as they do now." 

When today the traveler, by some happy chance, comes 
upon the work of that early day, — some homely cottage 
or richer abbey-church, which seem to grow out of the 
familiar nature amid which they stand, — he is touched 
by their human happy significance. The people shared 
then in art. However unequal men were in their social 
relations as king and common folk, the art of that day 
was free and democratic. By his labor, many a man, 
enslaved in body, was free in spirit. "I know that in those 
days life was often rough and evil enough, beset by vio- 



130 THE CHANGING ORDER 

lence, superstition, ignorance, slavery ; yet sorely as poor 
folks needed a solace, they did not altogether lack one, 
and their solace was pleasure in their work." Under 
these conditions, art grew until the material world seemed 
bound beneath the spirit's rule. Then the Gothic ages 
came to their end. The life of the Renaissance made all 
things new. And, strangely, while in the new days the 
difference between king and subject has been destroyed, 
art has withdrawn from the people and become the 
birthright of the few. 

For himself, Morris repeated the conditions out of 
which pure art alone can spring. He was a man before 
he was a poet. He cultivated body, heart and brain, 
choosing to live before he wrote. Out of his life sprang 
pure art. All of his work was done with evident ease 
and pleasure. By his own example, Morris called the 
world back to the human, back to that labor, which is the 
highest life. 

Meanwhile Morris was writing rapidly and well. 
"The Earthly Paradise" appeared ten years after "The 
Defence of Guenevere." "The Life and Death of Jason" 
was begun as one of the series of the epic, but was pub- 
lished separately in 1867. During one of his holiday 
rambles in company with E. Magnusson of Cambridge, 
he had visited Iceland, where he was heralded as a 
"scald" — and he looked the character — and together the 
two translated several Icelandic sagas. In 1878 ap- 
peared the "Story of Sigurd the Volsung" and some 
Northern love stories. Translations of the Aeneids and 
Odyssey, some Northern stories, lectures on art and so- 
cialism, a volume of "Poems by the Way," and "Pilgrims 
of Hope," originally contributed to socialistic publica- 



A TYPE OF TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 131 

tions, "The Dream of John Ball," an interlude "The 
Tables Turned," "News from Nowhere," and some so- 
cialistic pamphlets constitute his later writings. 

III. 

With his works before us we ask, What was the key 
to the poet's life? Wttat was the m^m spring >i his 
action ? 

The first volumes from the poet's pen were wrought in 
the spirit of the middle ages. They reflect all that was 
most vital in the mediaeval period, its romance and 
splendor, its gold and glittering steel, its fantastic pas- 
sions and unreality, likewise its wonders, its doubts, 
its desires, its haunting sadness. 

"The Defence of Guenevere" was dedicated "To My 
Friend, Dante Gabriel Rossetti." The genius of the 
poet and the painter is very much akin. Both were 
appointed from youth to the service of art and song. 
Their genius was alike nurtured in a mediaeval household 
where romantic themes were familiar, and heroic fancies 
welcome. Early the two became staunch and sympathetic 
friends. It is an Oxford tradition that both were enam- 
ored of the beautiful lady, the "Beata mea Domina" of 
"The Defence of Guenevere." 

"All men that see her any time, 
I charge you straightly in this rhyme 
What and wherever you may be — 
Beata mea Domina! 

"To kneel before her; as for me, 
I choke and grow quite faint to see 
My lady moving graciously, 
Beata mea Domina!" 



132 THE CHANG 1 NO ORDER 

This is the wife to whom "The Earthly Paradise" 
is dedicated, and who. with her daughter May, appears in 
Rossetti's paintings, his type of sensuous and spiritual 
beauty. Then for a number of years. Rossetti was a 
constant guest of the Morris family at the Kelmseott 
Manor House on the Upper Thames, a glimpse of which 
is seen in Rossetti's "Water Willow" painting-. Their in- 
terests were nearly identical. Their outlook upon life 
was quite the same. Each had withdrawn to a world of 
lovely forms and sweet sounds and dreams apart from 
modern thought and struggle. Each drew his inspiration 
from the beauty of old-world story. "Arthur's Tomb" 
was drawn to illustrate Morris's poem, "The Blue Closet." 
and "The Tune of Seven Towers" was written to accom- 
pany Rossetti's pictures. They are both sensuous, both 
colorists of a high order. Rossetti is excelled by none 
since Titian, in the peculiar triumph of his touch in color. 
Morris is gifted with a painter's vision: he is moved to 
delight by the color and form of outward things. Ros- 
setti's lavish gxeens and golds and scarlets are reflected 
from the other's poems, which seem ever bathed in light 
as from painted abbey-windows. The one is a poet- 
painter : the other a painter-poet. In the work of each 
there is an element of sadness. Those pathetic faces, 
charged with dreams, so characteristic of the paintings, 
look out from the pages of the poems. Even the colors of 
the first decorative fabrics of the Morris manufactory, 
those harmonies in olive and saffron, bronze, rusty-red. 
grey-green and blue were conceived for the most part in 
a mood of sadness. 

What was it. indeed, that touched the brush of all those 
brother painters ? The faces they drew are haunted with 



A TYPE OP TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 133 

not unpleasant but still pensive dreams. The pictures of 
Burne- Jones have a wistful, sorrowful old-world beauty. 
His Four Seasons might be used to illustrate the several 
months of "The Earthly Paradise." Beautiful but sad 
are Spring and Summer. Autumn stands wearily by the 
side of a lake, looking pensively across the lillies. Chill 
Winter, in life's November, is clad in hooded cloak, 
warming her hands by the fire, and bending down over 
a book of prayer, waiting for the end: "Who shall say 
if I were dead, What should be remembered ?" 

The haunting presence is Death. Morris dwelt con- 
stantly upon the theme of Death, the lapse of time, the ap- 
proach of age. To the carriers of the Golden Fleece the 
sirens sing, "Come to the land wnere none grows old." 
The mariners of "The Earthly Paradise" sail to the west 
for a paradise of rest and immortality where age cannot 
enter or death destroy. Death accompanies the young 
men and maidens, even though they sing the carols of 
the morn. Death whispers in the wind that showers down 
the blossoms in the orchard. On the very dawn of May, 
the merry month when the Lord of Love goes by, the poet 
holds his breath and shudders at the sight of Eld and 
Death. He cannot make death a little thing. His heart 
is oft too weary to struggle against doubt and thought. 
Seldom for his words can we forget our tears. 

Morris has often been compared with Chaucer. "The 
Earthly Paradise" was confessedly conceived under the 
inspiration of "my master Chaucer." And earlier, in 
Jason, he yearns for 

"Some portion of that mastery 
That from the rose-hung lanes of woody Kent 
Through these five hundred years such songs have sent 



134 THE CHANGING ORDER 

To us, who, meshed within this smoky net 
Of tmrejoicing labor, love them yet." 

And truly with the master the pupil may be matched in 
faculty of portraiture and story telling, and in melody of 
perfect verse. For Morris had use of every poetic means 
at Chaucer's command, and did "bring before men's 
eyes the image of the thing" his "heart is filled with." 
But again they differ as sunshine and shadow. There 
was for Chaucer no month but May. His pages are 
steeped in light and dew. He has the candor of the morn- 
ing, is jovial, sane and strong. Morris chooses rather to 
string his lyre on some sad evening of the Autumn tide. 
He lacks the elder poet's serenity of soul. Morris sang 
the woe of Psyche, but her joy on entering her immor- 
tality of bliss, he could not sing : — 

"My lyre is but attuned to tears and pain. 
How shall I sing the never ending day?" 

If a mediaeval parallel to "The Earthly Paradise" be 
sought, it will be found in the "Decameron" rather than 
in the "Canterbury Tales" — in that account of men and 
ladies, who fled from their plague stricken neighbors to 
tell their idle tales in forgetfulness. And yet, while Mor- 
ris is supreme as an epic narrator, objective and imper- 
sonal, and tells a story, unlike Spenser and Tennyson, 
but like Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Walter Scott, for the 
story's sake, he is in a manner subjective, and his works 
are permeated, perhaps unconsciously at times, by the 
modern social lament that the world is "out of joint." 
"The Earthly Paradise" is not merely a collection of tales ; 
it is somehow Morris's solution of the problem of our 



A TYPE OF TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 135 

human life. For each tale ends the same, — "needs must 
end the same and we men call it death." 

"So if I tell the story of the past 
Let it be worth some little rest, I pray — 
A little slumber ere the end of day." 

His growing seriousness of purpose is still more mani- 
fest in the story of Sigurd and the Niblungs, which in 
its splendid epical strength occupies a medial place be- 
tween the early idyllic poems and the later socialistic 
prose. The epic narrative is here determined by a central 
thread of purpose. From the many loosely related and 
unmeaning incidents of the traditional saga, our bard 
has selected those only which should complete the one 
essential tale of greed and wrong and redemptive love. 

Richard Wagner, whose definite ideal intent none can 
gainsay, out of the same materials constructed the Sieg- 
fried tetralogy, a cycle of dramas of similar significance. 
By reason of the requirement of a dramatic form, the one 
is led to culminate the play with the death of Siegfried 
and the consuming flames on Valhalla. Morris, as is 
consistent with an epic narrator, continues the story to 
the fall of the Niblung kings, but beyond this he cannot 
go ; the work of fate is ended. Sigurd, faring forth to do 
battle with the foes of the gods, thinks the time is long 
"till the dawning of love's summer from the cloudy 
days of wrong." So John Ball thought, and the writer 
of "News from Nowhere" the same. 

Probably Chaucer had less reason for complaint than 
had Morris. Things were not well in England, as Lang- 
land and the Kentish preacher said, but Chaucer and his 
folk could still be "merrie." One wonders to-day how 



136 THE CHANGING ORDER 

any one who takes thought of "the hard-used race of men" 
can be merry. 

"Think of the spreading sore of London swallowing up with 
its loathsomeness field and wood and heath witnout mercy and 
without hope, mocking our feeble efforts to deal even with its 
minor evils of smoke laden sky and befouled river: the black 
horror and reckless squalor of our manufacturing districts, so 
dreadful to the senses which are unused to them that it is 
ominous for the future of the race that any man can live among 
it in tolerable cheerfulness." 

Morris wrote, in short, in the spirit of a man who 
recognized life's tragic conditions. In all his sweet lines, 
we feel that the writer's soul was rilled with weariness. 
Woe seemed to him inevitable and universal. The world 
of his vision was like the weary Titan of Arnold's poem, 
staggering on to the goal, bearing the too great load of 
her fate. In spite of his Celtic ancestry, he was essen- 
tially a Teuton with the pagan sense of fatalism. Fate is 
the key-word of "Jason" and "The Earthly Paradise." 
Sigurd and the Volsung heroes are guided ever by the 
Norns : — 

"And what the dawn has fated on the hour of noon shall fall." 

"Yea, a man shall be 
A wonder for his glorious chivalry, 
First in all wisdom, of a prudent mind, 
Yet none the less him too his fate shall find." 

Unique indeed among literatures in pathos of anticipated 
calamity is one of the "Poems by the Way," entitled the 
"Burgher's Battle," where lamentation mingles with calm 
resignation, exampling the pathos of foreboded fate: — 

"Look up! the arrows streak the sky, 



A TYPE OF TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 137 

The horns of battle roar; 
The long spears lower and draw nigh, 
And we return no more." 

Even the stories, "The House of the Wolfings" and "The 
Story of the Glittering Plain/' are touched with a light 
which is half sad, like the silver haze of the Indian sum- 
mer presaging November snows. 

The thought of love alone puts all doubts away. Yet 
love cannot escape the universal law. 

"Love while ye may; if twain grow into one 
'Tis for a little while; the time goes by, 
No hatred twixt the pair of friends doth lie, 
No troubles break their hearts — and yet and yet — 
How could it be? We strove not to forget; 
Rather in vain to that old time we clung, 
Its hopes and wishes, round our hearts we hung. 
We played old parts, we used old names in vain, 
We go our ways and twain once more are twain; 
Let pass — at latest when we come to die 
Thus shall the fashion of the world go by." 

Yet love while ye may. The sufficiency of love is the 
subject of the morality play of "Pharamond," which 
showeth of a king whom nothing but love might satisfy. 
Love sings, — 

"I am the life of all that dieth not, 
Through me alone is sorrow unforgot." 

And the poet concedes, — 

"Love is enough: though the world be a-waning 
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining." 

In sear October, midst the failing year, he cries, — 

"Look up love! Ah cling close and never move! 
How can I have enough of life and love?" 



138 THE CHANGING ORDER 

What begetteth all this storm of bliss ? 

"But Death himself, who, crying solemnly, 
E'en from the heart of sweet Forgetfulness, 
Bids us 'Bejoice, lest pleasureless ye die, 
Within a little time must ye go by. 
Stretch forth your open hands and while ye live 
Take all the gifts that Death and Life may give.' " 

Death and age and forgetfulness are so abhorrent that 
every minute is made more mindful as it passes by. The 
poet had a feverish eagerness to enjoy whatever is beau- 
tiful — every love and friendship, every fine creation of 
the artistic thought, every charm of nature, every touch 
of sun and shadow, every note of the winds or the seas — 
eagerness to take delight in life itself before the night 
came when no man could enjoy. 

"Love is enough: cherish life that abideth, 
Lest ye die ere ye know him and curse and misname him." 

The singer could not know the meaning of death. He 
knew the meaning of life as little. 

"Death have we hated, knowing not what it meant ; 
Life have we lived through green leaf and through sere 
Though still the less we knew of its intent." 

Yet as if in rebuke to those of us who hate life though 
we do not fear death, he cried, "What happiness to look 
upon the sun \" So 

"In the white-flowered hawthorn brake, 
Love be merry for my sake; 
Twine the blossoms in my hair, 
Kiss me where I am most fair — 
Kiss me love! for who knoweth 
What thing cometh after death?" 



A TYPE OP TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 139 

The poet's philosophy of fated life was, however, in- 
terwoven with a great faith in the consolation of art and 
labor. Art was his own passionate delight. As an artist 
he was content and calm. His poems are of unvarying 
charm and purity, with every superlative metrical excel- 
lence. The heart of the writer has been in his work. He 
bade farewell to his finished books as a lover: "I love 
thee whatso time or men may say of the poor singer of 
an empty day;" "I confess I am dull now my book is 
done ;" "I have now committed the irremediable error of 
finishing the Odyssey. I am rather sad thereat." How 
he delighted in the telling of a story ! He dallied at what- 
ever attracted his interest. Greatest care was taken in 
depicting works of human handiwork. He loved to 
picture golden vessels and ivory thrones and webs of 
price and sculptured gate and pictured ceiling and painted 
palaces and marble halls. A city is thus described, — 

"Walled with white walls it was, and gardens green 
Were set between the houses everywhere; 
And now and then rose up a tower foursquare 
Lessening in stage on stage; with many a hue 
The house walls glowed, of red and green and blue, 
And some with gold were well adorned, and one 
From roofs of gold flashed back the noon-tide sun." 

Entering the palace the decorations are noted : — 

"With hangings fresh as when they left the loom 
The walls were hung a space above the head, 
Slim ivory chairs were set about the room, 
And in one corner was a dainty bed, 
That seemed for some fair queen apparelled 
And marble was the worst stone of the floor 
That with rich Indian webs was covered o'er." 



140 THE CHANGING ORDER 

These are the wonders of Aetes' marble house : — 

"The pillars made the mighty roof to hold, 
The one was silver and the next was gold, 
All down the hall; the roof of some strange wood 
Brought over sea, was dyed as red as blood, 
Set thick with silver flowers, and delight 
Of intertwining figures wrought aright. 
With richest webs the marble halls were hung, 
Picturing sweet stories by the poets sung 
From ancient days so that no wall seemed there, 
But rather forests black and meadows fair, 
And streets of well built towns, with tumbling seas 
About their marble wharves and palaces, 
And fearful crags and mountains; and all trod 
By changing feet of giant, nymph, and God, 
Spear-shaking warrior and slim-ankled maid." 

But how give people eyes and soul for art and beauty ? 
How but by guarding the fairness of the earth and sky? 
Must not the city be made as refreshing as the meadows, 
as exalting as the mountains ? Art and nature are inter- 
dependent. Art is the expression of reverence for nature. 
The spirit of the new days is to be delight in the life of the 
world, love of the very surface of the earth. Surely if 
the seasons are to arouse in us no other feelings than 
misery in winter and weariness in summer, then art too 
will fail, and we shall live amidst squalor and ugliness. 

Morris was passionately fond of the sun and air. He 
loved the moist green meadows and silver streaming 
rivers of his England. To the fields and woods he was 
wont to go for sound and color and pure sensuous delight. 
"If I could but say or show how I love it, — the earth 
and the growth of it and the life of it !" His every work 
is a witness to this loving sympathy. In the landscapes 



A TYPE OP TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 141 

of "The Earthly Paradise" he notes the elements of de- 
light, — sounds, sights, and odors, the songs of birds, the 
hues and tints of nature, the winds, orange-scented, or 
heavy with odors from thymy hills, or laden with the 
redolence of bean-flowers and clover and elder blossoms. 
In some land "long ago" there was 

"A valley that beneath the haze 
Of that most fair of Autumn days 
Shewed glorious; fair with golden sheaves, 
Rich with darkened autumn leaves. 
Gay with its water meadows green 
The bright blue streams that lay between — 
The miles of beauty stretched away." 

In another country 

"Midst her wanderings on a hot noon-tide 
Psyche passed down a road where on each side 
The yellow corn fields lay, although as yet 
Unto the stalks no sickle had been set; 
The lark sung over them, the butterfly 
Flickered from ear to ear distractedly, 
The kestrel hung above, the weasel peered 
From out the wheat-stalks on her unafeared, 
Along the road the trembling poppies shed 
On the burnt grass their crumbling leaves and red." 

A different aspect of nature is presented in the story 
of Sigurd, where Nature encompasses the heroes about 
with the likeness of a fate. In harmony with the North- 
ern sense of fatalism, days and nights form the back- 
ground of deeds. Morn falls to noon-tide, and the sun 
goeth down in the heavens, and the dusk and the dark 
draw over, and the stars to heaven come, and the white 
moon climbeth upward, and the dusk of the dawn begins, 



142 THE CHANGING ORDER 

and the day opens again, — 'mid light and darkness the 
heroes ever move. Follow Sigurd as he rides with Regin 
to the Glittering Heath : — 

"And the sun rose up at their backs and the grey world changed 

to red, 
And away to the West went Sigurd by the glory wreathed 

about." 

* * * * 

"So ever they wended upward and the midnight hour was o'er 

And the stars grew pale and paler, and failed from the heav- 
en's floor, 

And the moon was a long while dead, but where was the 
promise of day? 

No change came over the darkness, no streak of the dawning 
grey; 

No sound of the winds uprising adown the night there ran; 

It was blind as the Gaping Gulf ere the first of the worlds 
began. 

* # * * 

"But lo, at the last a glimmer, and a light from the west there 

came, 
And another and another, like points of a far off flame; 
And they grew and brightened and gathered; and whiles 

together they ran 
Like the moonwake over the waters ; and whiles they were scant 

and wan, 
Some greater and some lesser, like the boats of fishers laid 
About the sea of midnight, and a dusky dawn they made, 
A faint and glimmering twilight." 

Then through the twilight, Sigurd wends his way to meet 
the foe of the Gods, and ere daylight is come the heart of 
the serpent is cloven. 

"Then he leapt from the pit and the grave and the rushing 
river of blood, 



A TYPE OF TRANSITION: WILLIAM MORRIS 143 

And fulfilled with the joy of the War-God in the face of earth 

he stood 
With red sword high uplifted, with wrathful, glittering eyes; 
And he laughed at the heavens above him for he saw the 

sun arise, 
And Sigurd gleamed on the desert, and shone in the new born 

light, 
And the wind in his raiment wavered and all the world was 

bright." 

After reading "The Earthly Paradise," it is not sur- 
prising to find in "News from Nowhere" that the very 
essence of the new day of fellowship and rest is delight in 
the natural beauty of the world. The poet is not now 
describing a land long ago, but his England new-created ; 
and this is his picture of an old house on the upper 
Thames and of the new joy : 

"On the right hand we could see a cluster of small houses and 
barns, new and old, and before us a grey stone barn and a wall 
partly overgrown with ivy, over which a few grey gables showed. 
We crossed the road, and again almost without my will my 
hand raised the latch of a door in the wall, and we stood presently 
on a stone path which led up to the old house. . . . My com- 
panion gave a sigh of pleased surprise and enjoyment; nor did 
I wonder, for the garden between the wall and the house was 
redolent of the June flowers, and the roses were rolling over one 
another with that delicious superabundance of small well tended 
gardens which at first sight takes away all thought from the 
beholder save that of beauty. The blackbirds were singing their 
loudest, the doves were cooing on the roof ridge, the rooks in the 
high elm trees beyond were garrulous among the young leaves, 
and the swifts wheeled whirring about the gables. And the house 
itself was a fit guardian for all the beauty of this heart of sum- 
mer. 

"Once again Ellen echoed my thoughts as she said: 'Yes, 
friend, this is what I came out for to see; this many gabled old 



144 THE CHANGING ORDER 

house, built by the simple country folk of the long-past times 
. . . is lovely still, amidst all the beauty which these latter 
days have created. ... It seems to me as if it had waited for 
these happy days, and held in it the gathered crumbs of happi- 
ness of the confused and turbulent past.' 

"She led me up close to the house, and laid her shapely sun- 
browned hand and arm on the lichened wall as if to embrace it, 
and cried out, '0 me! me! How I love the earth, and the sea- 
sons, and weather, and all things that deal with it, and all that 
grows out of it — as this has done!'" 



IV. 



The development of Morris's life has been gradual. 
His genius, we can now see, was nurtured and matured in 
a dim, mediaeval atmosphere. His early writings were 
suited to the fragile sense of some lady of an ancient 
bower whose eyes might wet when "heaven and earth 
on some fair eve had grown too fair for mirth." The 
poet confessed his verses had no power to bear the cares 
of the earners of bread. "My work," he said of himself 
at this period, "is the embodiment of dreams." For him- 
self and for those who could be lulled by his empty songs, 
he built a shadowy isle of bliss, "East of the Sun and 
West of the Moon," in the golden haze of the past. 
Each year, however, his work became more wide and 
sane. Each work advanced on the last in intensity of 
human feeling. From the romantic mysticism of his 
stories he was summoned to epic narrative. The story 
of Sigurd is easily the strongest and most effective epic 
of its century. The influence of Rossetti was outgrown 
and the twain parted to follow diverse roads. Rossetti 
lost himself in artistic mysticism. Morris's robust nature 



A TYPE OP TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 145 

led him into the arena of daily life. As early as 1877 he 
helped to institute a Society for the Protection of An- 
cient Buildings, and the Eastern Question Association, 
his interest in the former being the immediate occasion 
of his first public address, his devotion to the latter 
leading to his adoption of a dogmatic Socialism. 
That year he wrote his first political verse, a stirring 
ballad, "Wake London Lads," which was sung at an 
Exeter Hall meeting of protest. Sigurd written at this 
epoch of his evolution is concerned with ideal human 
life. Said Sigurd to the King of the Niblungs : — 

"And I would that the loving were loved, and I would that the 

weary should sleep 
And that man should hearken to man, and that he that soweth 
should reap." 

In "The Dream of John Ball," the most exquisite of his 
prose romances and the most profound among his social 
writings, and "News from Nowhere," an idyl of Revolu- 
tion, Morris grasped at length the concrete problems of 
social existence. In "Poems by the Way" and "Pilgrims 
of Hope" he poetized the democratic concepts of the 
new world as they had never been rendered before. 
"The cause of art," he now saw, "is the cause of the peo- 
ple." All through the 8o's his energy and ardor were 
given to propagandism. He was one of the prime sup- 
porters of the Democratic Federation, which he joined 
in 1882. He became the recognized leader of a Socialist 
League, founded at the close of the year 1884, acted 
as its Treasurer and edited its official publication, The 
Commonweal. In a letter written in 1886, he said: "The 
ideas which have taken hold of me will not let me rest; 



146 THE CHANGING ORDER 

nor can I see anything else worth thinking of." In 1890, 
withdrawing from the Socialist League, because of its 
growing anarchistic tendencies, a seceding group with 
Morris as leader formed the Hammersmith Socialist 
Society. To the ending of the commercial age and the 
dawning of a day of peace and good will, Morris now 
looked forward with the same feeling as when in Sigurd 
he pictured the twilight of the gods of greed and the 
rising of the sun in Balder the Fair. 

To Morris's first readers the abandonment of aesthetic 
for social standards must have seemed a wandering in 
the wilderness — so little is the true nature of literature 
understood. So little is the unity of Morris's many-sided 
career comprehended it has been left for sociology, the 
newest of the sciences, to discern the real meaning of 
literature. Literature, in truth, is social in its origin, 
social in its nature, and social in its results. It was the 
same Morris who at different times composed poems, 
designed wall papers, printed books and devised plans of 
social reform. Poets are idealists. The condition of their 
writing at all is that they have the power of creating 
certain ideal forms. It is now a matter of indifference 
whether these ideal forms are projected into books or 
upon canvas, or into society itself, but projected they must 
be. The lives of such authors and artists as Victor Hugo, 
Zola, Shelley, Millet, Ruskin and Tolstoi furnish proof 
of this. The connection between literature and life is 
indeed so intimate that it is doubtful if anyone can either 
create or understand great literature who has not the 
genius for social reform. Lester Ward defines genius as 
a sociogenetic force, socially not personally advantageous. 



A TYPE OP TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 147 

In becoming" a socialist Morris proved the vitality of his 
poetry and the integrity of his own soul. 

It is true that he was a fatalist. But his sense of fate 
increased the value of life. Life, he found, is worth 
living for its own sake, for love of friends, and joy and 
work and freedom. Early he had reached a profound 
conviction of the purpose of art as an indispensable ele- 
ment in human life. 

"Beauty which is what is meant by art, using the word in its 
widest sense, is, I contend, no mere accident of human life which 
people can take or leave as they choose, but a positive necessity 
of life, if we are to live as nature meant us to, that is unless 
we are content to be less than men." 

It was the spectacle or art d\ing out under the system 
of capitalism that first drew his attention to Socialism. 
In his combined claim for art and labor — the return of 
art, that is to say of the "Pleasure of Life," to the people 
— shall it not be acknowledged that Morris reached by an 
elemental instinct a great truth of the world; for indus- 
trial liberty, to gain which the world is now struggling, 
is the most intimate and personal of all emancipatory 
modes. Industrial liberty means the return of manhood 
to common work. "Life," says Ruskin, "without indus- 
try is guilt, and industry without art is brutality." The 
world, to-day, in short, is under the necessity of grati- 
fying the art instinct; that is, of humanizing labor, of 
giving soul to the Titan's body, or of suffering enslave- 
ment to mere materials. Any economy worthy of the 
name must enforce the need of uniting art and industry. 

So after many years the social burden of £he times was 
laid upon the poet's mind and heart. His passion for 
life and beauty inflamed him with a desire to bring all 



148 THE CHANGING ORDER 

men within the circle of their ministration. But before 
him perpetually was the city of London, huge and un- 
sightly. He heard the murmur and moan from the race 
of men. From his home by the river he saw the working 
of a selfish commercialism which had taken monetary 
profit and loss, and not the human kind, as its basis for 
calculation. With a heart laden with anger, he entered 
a protest against "man's inhumanity to man." With a 
heart laden with love, he preached the doctrines of 
brotherhood. His position was revolutionary. 

"I have more than ever at my heart the importance for 
people of living in beautiful places; I mean the sort of 
beauty which would be attainable by all, if people could 
but begin to long for it. I do most earnestly desire that 
something more startling could be done than mere con- 
stant private grumbling and occasional public speaking 
to lift the standard of revolt against the sordidness which 
people are so stupid as to think necessary." 

The key to his revolutionary position is contained in 
an address made before a Trade Guild assembly : 

"I do not want art for a few, any more than education 
for a few, or freedom for a few. No, rather than that 
art should live this poor thin life among a few excep- 
tional men, despising those beneath them for an ignor- 
ance for which they themselves are responsible, for a 
brutality which they will not struggle with; rather than 
this, I would that the world should, indeed, sweep away 
all art for awhile — rather than wheat should rot in a 
miser's granary, I would that the earth had it, that it 
might quicken in the dark." 

The democratization of art was, in short, the special 
social aim of William Morris. The "Cause," as Morris 



A TYPE OP TRANSITION : WILLIAM MORRIS 149 

always called the object of his devotion, pertains to the 
well being of every individual. That civilization which 
does not carry with it the whole people is doomed to 
failure. Pertinently he makes his plea : 

"Let me remind you how only the other day in the life time 
of the youngest of us, many thousand men of our own kindred 
gave their lives on the battle field to bring to a happy ending a 
mere episode in the struggle for the abolition of slavery: They 
are blessed and happy for the opportunity came to them, and 
they seized it and did their best, and the world is the wealthier 
for it: and if such an opportunity is offered to us, shall we 
thrust it from us that we may sit still in ease of body, in doubt, 
in disease of soul?" 

Revolutionary as Morris was in theory, in practical 
temper he was eminently sane and constructive. "For 
the most part," he would say, "we shall be too busy doing 
the work that lies ready to our hands to let impatience 
for visibly great progress vex us much. And surely, 
since we are servants of a cause, hope must be ever 
with us." 

As a prophet of new industrialism, William Morris 
was one of the most significant men of the nineteenth 
century. He must command respect even from those 
who cannot share in his socialistic hope. Be it observed 
that no stunted capacity or sordid aims ranged him on 
the side of socialism. All in all he is the most distin- 
guished Englishman of the 19th century, and his utter- 
ances must be received with respect. It was furthermore 
a real burden which he bore. He had reverence for the 
life of man upon the earth. To the cause of humanity, 
he subordinated his whole poetic genius. With a strenu- 
ous hope and with a sturdy strife at breast, he turned to 



150 THE CHANGING ORDER 

the future, and with that longing for rest that never kit 
him, created in the heroic age to come, a romance of rrst 
and peace and good will. And if others can see it as he 
saw it, then it may be called a vision rather than a dream. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY. 

(AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE ILLINOIS STATE 
TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION, DECEMBER, I904.) 

The maker of this program had a philosophic and dis- 
cerning mind. He perceived that play is a principle of 
such universal bearing that it has a science, a sociology 
and a philosophy. Play, to use the terms of science, is 
a mode of motion. Wherever there is movement there 
is play. If we may believe Lucretius as to the loves and 
hates of atoms play is an attribute of all matter. The 
principle of play was first given formulation, I believe, 
by the German poet Schiller. Its universal significance 
was first detected by Herbert Spencer who traced the 
aesthetic activity of man to the play of animals, the se- 
lective sense of beauty in plants, and the sentient life of 
the atom. Play in the human sphere may be defined as 
the free creative functioning of the self. 

The properties of play may be determined by a study 
of its modes among animals, and of its processes when 
it becomes humanized and consciously artistic. For art 
is the freest play-ground of the spirit. What are the con- 
ditions under which necessity passes into freedom and 
the useful is idealized and transfigured? 

The function that beauty serves in evolution is an im- 
portant one. Not infrequently the law of the survival 
of the fittest means the survival of the most beautiful. 
The graceful feathers of the lyre-bird, the gorgeous color- 



152 THE CHANGING ORDER 

ing of the peacock and humming-bird, the calls of mon- 
keys, birds and insects, the brilliancy of flowers — all repre- 
sent evolutionary selection in lines of beauty. Fair forms 
and colors are the summons sent from objects to objects 
for fusion and union. Impressionability to beauty implies 
a conscious aesthetic sense on the part of those creatures 
thus affected. That there is aesthetical feeling among the 
lower forms of life is proven beyond a doubt. The 
famous bower-birds of Australia furnish the most notable 
instance of aesthetic display among animals. For use dur- 
ing the time of courtship these birds construct bowers of 
twigs and grass. These halls are not made for practical 
use, but serve as festal structures, or avenues of assembly, 
in which their owners may plume and display themselves. 
The greatest care and taste are lavished upon the work. 
Foundations are laid in the ground, and a bower of grass 
and bushes, several feet in length, is arched overhead. 
The courts at the end of the bower are paved with small 
round pebbles, and bright stones, shells and feathers are 
so displayed that a color adornment is secured. Such 
structures, not being intended for nests, but simply to be 
used during a special festal period, are wholly ideal in 
their nature, and evidence the presence of the spirit of 
play. 

The aesthetic display in man began with the same refer- 
ence to his mate, but the feeling was gradually extended 
to comprise outside persons, and having assumed sociolog- 
ical import, it became in time a most efficient instrument 
in the struggle for existence. The savage adorned his 
body, decorated his utensils and weapons, shaped and 
colored his dwelling place. To the adornment of his 
home he further employed sculpture and painting. Under 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY 153 

excitement he sang — a simple musical chant, and to its 
rhythms he danced, and out of the dance poetry and the 
drama arose. Everything in primitive life points to the 
immense importance of the aesthetic activity. The quality 
of the art and the stage of culture correspond intimately. 
When men ceased to hunt, and settled as agriculturists, 
the richness of their art compared with the former pov- 
erty, is a sign of social advance. But this very improve- 
ment is in part due to the order and unity introduced 
into the fluctuating life of hunting tribes by various forms 
of art, particularly the dance, which by engaging whole 
family groups, furthered greater social union. 

What now is the source of the artistic impulse and 
with what life process is it associated ? Among the low- 
est forms of life all the energy of being seems to be ex- 
pended in sustaining and preserving life. Among the 
higher orders, where the conflict of life is less fierce, 
opportunity is afforded for escape into ideal action. The 
energy of being, not fully exhausted in the effort to sup- 
ply physical needs, engages in some form of free expres- 
sion, as directed by more or less conscious ideal desire. 
Play implies freedom from physical need, an excess of 
life functioning, some degree of self-determination, some 
conscious satisfaction, and a certain power of abstraction. 

To justify this statement let me pass in review a series 
of activities ; advancing from the simple to the complex 
and from animals to men. 

The simple aimless running about of animals and men 
in play rises into the more complex forms of the leap 
and gesture, in a more advanced civilization passing to 
forms of the dance. The simple shout and cry develops 
into successive and pleasing notes, as of a bird, and issues 



1'54 THE CHANGING ORDER 

in human song. The purposeless clawing and cutting of 
animals and men become some form of pleasure-giving 
construction, such as purposeful carving and adornment, 
with delight in form. The simple color sense leads to 
decoration for pleasure and with a sense of harmony. 
The adornment of nests with bright objects proceeds to 
construction, with a sense of form, and, among men, to 
building with a conscious feeling for proportion. 

Now examine the later modes of these activities and 
note the common characteristic ! The dance, the complex 
form of running and leaping, is distinguished by con- 
scious rhythm. The song, the higher form of the cry, is 
characterized by a conscious sense of time. Carving, 
the artistic outcome of cutting, is differentiated by a 
knowledge of design. Color decoration, the complex 
form of a simple sense for bright objects, is distinguished 
by perception of color harmony. Finally, building, the 
higher form of construction, is done under knowledge of 
proportion. What is added in the second series to the 
first? Plainly in the first series the activity is aimless; 
in the second there is order and design. The presence of 
order evidences the introduction of mind into the process. 
The savage dances in rhythm, sings in time, paints in 
color, builds in proportion, because it is pleasing to him 
psychically to engage in an ideal self-determined exercise. 
Here, then, play-activity becomes aesthetic; his play is 
carried on with conscious purpose, freedom, self-deter- 
mination, and pleasure. 

Where purpose does not enter, the activity is not truly 
denominated play. The deer in running strikes his hoofs 
in order, but the order is mechanical and not self-con- 
trolled. The bird sings in successive notes, the beaver 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY 155 

builds dams, ants build hills, bees construct cells ; but 
these results are not intentional. The animal is uncon- 
scious, merely under the control of evolutionary forces; 
the excellence of the result not being dependent upon 
conscious intelligence, but upon fixedness of habit and 
the very narrowness of the line of improvement. The 
flower displays its color, but it has no sense of its har- 
mony in the field. Birds sing pleasing notes, but not, as 
in a choir, with a knowledge of general harmony. 

Mentality is perhaps most readily perceived in music. 
The cries of animals and the notes of birds can hardly be 
designated as song. The indefinite shouts and irregular 
cries of primitive man were expressions which had not 
yet arrived at aesthetic value. Sounds become musical 
when mind controls the succession and co-ordination. 
Music ascends from simple concord of two notes to ever 
more complex phrases, strains, songs and choruses: — 
ever higher and higher above the plane of sensation, 
until in orchestral and symphonic music the effect is al- 
most wholly mental. Into the work of art reflection, 
intention and invention enter. 

A convenient savage for our scrutiny in these respects 
is Browning's Caliban: a primitive man, yet one suf- 
ficiently evolved to exhibit racial characteristics. He is 
undeveloped, yet old enough to be taught of deity by his 
dam, and to think somewhat for himself. His sensory 
experiences are of a low order. Within the range of 
his interests his senses are keen, but only now and then 
does he see or hear aesthetically. He has learned the 
look of things in relation to his physical safety. He 
would examine clouds and sunsets as tokens of storm. 
The range of his interests is shown in his first reflection : 



156 THE CHANGING ORDER 

"Will sprawl now that the heat of day is best, 
Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, 
With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin, 
And while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, 
And feels about his spine small eft-things course, 
Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh; 
And while above his head a pompion-plant, 
Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye, 
Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard, 
And now a flower drops with a bee inside, 
And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch — 
He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross 
And recross, till they weave a spider-web — 
Meshes of fire some great fish breaks at times, 
And talks with his own self." 

In one of these sensory experiences: namely, when he 
looks out over the sea and watches the play of sunbeams, 
Caliban is receiving an aesthetic effect which has no rela- 
tion to his bodily pleasures ; it is not a sensuous pleasure 
only, but, also, an intellectual enjoyment. Furthermore, 
he is a creative artist. Thus he compares himself with 
Setebos : 

"Tasteth himself no finer good in the world 
When all goes right, in this safe summer time, 
And he wants little, hungers, aches, not much, 
Than trying what to do with wit and strength, 
Falls to make something; piled yon pile of turf a 
And squared and stuck there piles of soft white chalk, 
And with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on each, 
And set up endwise certain spikes of tree, 
And crowned the whole with a sloth's scull a-top 
Found dead in the woods, too hard for one to kill. 
No use at all in the work, for work's sole sake." 

The conditions of his artistic activity are thus his 



THE PHILOSOPHY OP PLAY V57 

physical safety, satisfaction, and consequent excess of 
energy. He is freed from external objects and permitted 
to give his ideal faculties full play. All that he does, 
thus conditioned, is characterized by the presence of de- 
sign; all is proportioned, harmonized and well ordered. 
He was under no compulsion to make these objects; 
he was purely self-conditioned in doing so, and mani- 
festly he works to the end of pleasure. 

Evolutionary aesthetics, then, establishes several im- 
portant facts about art and the artistic impulse. The es- 
sential characteristic of artistic expression is freedom. 
Art is not a product of necessity or related to use. It 
affords gratification to instincts and feelings which find 
their exercise only when necessity and use are satisfied. 
Practical activity serves as means, aesthetic activity is an 
end in itself. When savage tribes engage in warfare, 
their energy is practical. When victory is celebrated 
with dancing, the aesthetic is brought into play to the 
degree of pleasure experienced by the dancers in their 
own rhythmic movements. In art, man is not the creat- 
ure of fate, but the arbiter in the ideal realm, at least, of 
his own destinies, the maker of his own world. The 
artist is absolutely the only free man. 

And connected with this attribute is that of self-deter- 
mination. When moved by the impulse to create, the 
artist proves his individuality. He becomes conscious 
of possessing ideal faculties which, in order to realize, 
he must objectify for his contemplation. Thought must 
be expressed. Freedom is not lawlessness. But inner 
control is exchanged for outer law. When the artist 
creates a form and embodies himself therein, he is made 



158 THE CHANGING ORDER 

aware that he is a free, self-determining, law-abiding per- 
sonality. 

The third characteristic implied by the other two is 
what I shall call, for want of a better term, ideality. It 
is not the function of art to reproduce the real world. 
We have senses of our own and can take the artist's skill 
for granted. What we want displayed and defined is 
personality. What is the man's mystery? As we have 
seen, simple play becomes aesthetic, when it is conscious 
and conducted in freedom to the end of self-realization. 
Order, proportion, harmony are laws of art, not from 
any enactment on the part of critics, but from the very 
nature of mind. Mind is itself an order, a rhythm, a 
harmony. The history of art, therefore, is the history of 
a freely developing personality. As the soul expands 
and contains more, it expresses more. Mediaeval art is, 
in a sense, greater than Grecian art, since it contains 
more of life and experience. Gothic art may be inferior 
in point of skill and manipulation, but its soul is greater, 
its feeling more intense, its grasp of ideality more com- 
plete. The ancient world has no counterpart to Michel- 
angelo, with his fierce, vital, electric face and his tur- 
bulent, strenuous soul. The difference between the classic 
and the mediaeval is well expressed in Gilder's poems of 
the Two Worlds : one the world of the Venus of Milo : 

"Grace, majesty, and the calm bliss of life, 
No conscious war 'twixt human will and duty. 
Here breathes, forever free from pain and strife, 
The old, untroubled pagan world of beauty." 

The other is the world of Michelangelo's Slave : 
"Of life, of death the mystery and woe, 



THE PHILOSOPHY OP PLAY 159 

Witness in this mute, carven stone the whole! 
That suffering smile were never fashioned so 
Before the world had wakened to a soul." 

To the same effect is a passage in Lowell's "Cathedral." 

"The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness. 
But ah! this other, this Gothic that never ends, 
Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb, 
As full of morals half-divined as life, 
Graceful, grotesque, with ever new surprise 
Of hazardous caprices sure to please, 
Heavy as night-mare, airy-light as fern, 
Imagination's very self in stone! 
Your blood is mine, ye architects of dreams, 
Builders of aspiration incomplete." 

To illustrate the growth in ideality one might bring a 
Greek of the age of Pericles into the Western world. 
How much of the mediaeval and the modern would he 
comprehend ! He would stand before a Gothic Cathedral 
with amazement. The meaning of the structure, the 
sign of the Cross in transept and nave, everywhere the 
symbols of aspiration, of the yearning of the soul to 
reach through material forms to a spiritual truth far 
higher than Olympian heights : these would pass his un- 
derstanding. If taken to a Symphony Concert, he would 
have neither the sensory experience nor the ideality 
necessary to comprehend the different movements. How 
could he, who thought to enter the region of calm ten- 
anted by Zeus, feel the mighty passion, the tumultuous 
struggles of Beethoven's Heroic Symphony! Take him 
into a gallery of painting — would he not be bewildered 
by the complexity of modern life? What reading would 
he make of the pain and power in Millet's peasant faces? 



160 THE CHANGING ORDER 

What conception could he have of the tragedy and depth 
of the life conducted on the vast laborious earth? So 
would not the more recent psychic experiences of the 
race be beyond his apprehension? 

While the World's Fair was building at Chicago I 
watched the simple Java folk erect their huts and wattled 
fences beside the complex gigantic Ferris Wheel. I could 
not see that the Javians looked upon the wheel even with 
any wonder. They were hardly curious. The whole 
mechanical mystery was utterly beyond their grasp. 
The ideality of the wheel, the principles of its construc- 
tion, were many fold greater than that of their simple 
dwellings. 

The whole Fair, by the way, was a colossal play:— 
the Titanic sport of a summer, a buoyant lyric endeavor 
just meant to exhibit for a moment the hidden prophetic 
intentions of an ideal people, the scope of whose ideality 
was but inadequately measured by the vast arches that 
spanned the space of the manufactory building. Fes- 
tivals, shows, pomps, may be as important as the reali- 
ties of the streets, opportunities for ideal exercises, for 
which trade and commerce are the preparation and the 
background. When the complaint is heard that World's 
Fairs represent economic waste, it is well to be reminded 
of that saying of Schiller : "Man only plays, when, in the 
full meaning of the term, he is man, and he is only com- 
pletely man when he plays." 

When man plays he is free, he is self-determined. 
Freedom, self-determination, ideality: — these are the 
characteristics of aesthetic play. 

An important truth remains now to be stated. It is 
this : whenever a man expresses himself under conditions 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY 161 

of freedom and self-control, he is an artist — whatever 
his occupation or field of activity — and he receives the 
rewards and gains of an artist: the reward of pleasure, 
the gain of an enlarged personality, and an increasing 
personal force. What are called the Fine Arts are by 
no means the only aesthetic field. These have to-day 
limited an instinct which is common to all, usurped a 
privilege that should be shared by all. It has come about 
through historical changes that the artist, in these more 
specialized spheres, is the only free man in the world of 
work; all others, in some degree, live under compulsion. 
Therefore, the problem of freedom in the modern world 
is to extend that freedom which the artist alone enjoys 
into every field of industrialism. We may summarize 
our freedom thus far in these terms: Man is free po- 
litically. We have struggled with thrones and tyrannies 
and have won victory. If we suffer misgovernment to- 
day, we have ourselves to blame. So man is free in 
religious matters. We have battled with priesthood and 
ecclesiasticism and have gained the right of worship ac- 
cording to our conscience. If we remain evil, the fault 
is at our own doors. In these realms we are practi- 
cally free, shapers of the laws and creeds for ourselves. 
These matters have already receded in special interest, 
and special devotion to them bespeaks a retarded develop- 
ment. But, in the way of work, in what is for most of 
us most intimate, we are little better than slaves living 
under necessity, obeying machines, attending to masters. 
Now, as political liberty does not mean license and law- 
lessness, but rather the right to be a law to oneself, as 
religious liberty does not mean the right to have no reli- 
gion, but rather to be self-directive in worship and ser- 



162 THE CHANGING ORDER 

vice; so industrial liberty does not mean freedom from 
labor, but freedom in labor. For this right of self- 
directive labor, or, in the terms of this paper, for the right 
of play, the modern world is battling. Disguise the situa- 
tion as we may, the industrial world is in a state of war- 
fare. Various compromises have been agreed upon, 
whereby a partial freedom is enjoyed. Thus, we dis- 
tinguish between our activities; setting aside a portion 
of the day to toil and drudge, yielding this much to sub- 
mission, hoping to escape at night, when we can indulge 
our higher desires and live a moment spontaneously and 
instinctively. Meanwhile, we clamor for shorter hours 
of labor and a longer time for play. So long as labor is 
under bonds, untransformed by freedom, so long will 
this division and clamor continue. But the granting of 
an eight-hour day is no real solution of the problem. It 
is simply compromise and leaves the situation unchanged. 
The only satisfactory solution of the labor problem lies 
in the consecration of labor to the ends of life, to the 
ends of personality. Toil is a "curse" to none but slaves. 
To a freeman it is pleasure and desire. Conditions must 
so be changed that the laborer can find in his very work 
his genuine satisfaction. He must be granted the privi- 
lege now enjoyed by the artist only: the privilege of free 
expression, of self-determination, of ideal creation. Art 
and labor must so be associated that the one be extended 
and made universal as labor, and the other be redeemed 
and made delightful as art. It was some such associa- 
tion that Thoreau was making, when he said, at work in 
his field of beans: "It was not I that hoed beans, or 
beans that I hoed." He had in mind a celestial kind of 
agriculture and was raising a transcendental crop of 



. £HE PHILOSOPHY OF. PLAYjJ , 163 

virtues, patience, manliness, clear-thought and high- 
mindedness. It is better to produce great men than 
abundant crops. The reversal of this proposition as ap- 
plied in modern industrialism is provocative of mirth, — 
when one is not too angry at the spectacle. I submit 
that how to make a freeman at play out of a slave at work 
is the problem of history, the problem of democracy, the 
problem of today. 

The problem of education in a democracy is the same 
as that of industrialism. Shall education be motived by 
the desire for a special culture, a sort of objective product, 
or for a special character, a form of interior life? It 
seems to me that our education is even yet too formal and 
objective, too much concerned with knowledge and ma- 
chinery, and not enough with character. The ideal pre- 
vailing in our centers of education is that of the cultured 
gentleman: — a culture special, possible to the few, a cul- 
ture dependent upon refinement, intelligence and knowl- 
edge of books in a library, a culture that tends to separ- 
ate men, that erects barriers between the wise and the 
not-wise, that is selfish and unsocial. This is an ideal 
which we have inherited from feudal countries and from 
the theory of the leisure class. The cultured man, in fine, 
is prepared to live in an aristocracy and not in a democ- 
racy. His sympathies are untouched. His im- 
agination is without vitality. His fellows have 
no interest to him save as they are comprehended 
in the same exclusive circle. However attractive the 
ideal may be, it is destined to fade away before the slowly 
unfolding meanings of democracy, — fade as the ideals of 
kings and knights and priests have faded and become lost 
in the distance. Democracy demands a man of generous 



164 THE CHANGING ORDER 

sympathies, with imaginative if not actual community 
in every experience, a genuine social being, "a fluid and 
attaching character :" one capable of living, not in an ex- 
clusive aristocratic coterie, but in an inclusive democratic 
society, and one able to live at large, not with conde- 
scension, but with full sympathy. Now, personality is 
the one common possession of all men — this is the com- 
prehensive and unifying principle. It is of no account to 
hold men together by a written constitution. A nation 
is compacted by love and sympathy. Extend the essence 
of each until he comes to include the multitude; until 
his right becomes the right of all, and his law the 
law of all. Produce great men; the rest follows. Edu- 
cate the interior man ; avoid the ceremonial ; educate for 
freedom, self-control, ideal action, creative character. 

It was not without reason that Lincoln was called by 
Lowell "The First American." For this man was the 
very embodiment of the democratic idea. He had a 
culture that was as broad as life, as generous as love. 
Frederick Douglas said of him : "He was the first man in 
whose presence I forgot I was a negro." That is a 
sublime testimony, and signifies what I mean by an in- 
clusive character. Lincoln was not educated in our 
schools. The college might have instructed him, but 
it would have destroyed him. Democracy contemplates 
the possibility of education through the simple life pro- 
cesses, or at least, through the expert selection of those 
especially fitted for education. Lincoln's associate in 
democratism was Whitman, a man who escaped the tra- 
ditional discipline of the schools, but who, in secret 
striving for the culture of life, achieved a character that 
so combined the intellectual and the sympathetic, the 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY 165 

individual and the social, that in his own personality he 
comprehended humanity. If Lincoln was the only man, 
"Leaves of Grass" is the only book to which Douglas 
might come and find himself sympathetically compre- 
hended. One of the greatest lines in modern literature 
is Whitman's address to the poor outcast: "Not till 
the sun excludes you do I exclude you." In one of his 
poems, he proclaims the ideal of life in a democracy: 

"I announce natural persons to arise. 

I announce uncompromising liberty and equality. 

I announce splendors and majesties to make all previous politics 
of the earth insignificant. 
I announce adhesiveness, I say it shall be limitless, unloosen'd, 

I announce the great individual, fluid as nature, chaste, affec- 
tionate, compassionate, fully arm'd. 

I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, 

I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its 
translation." 

The educational problem presented by the lives of these 
two men, the first practical democrats the world 
has known, is profound and not easily solved. They rep- 
resent the ideal around which the sympathies and im- 
agination of men must henceforth gather. They exhibit 
a special development of personality and to their making 
ages of history have gone. Dare we face this ideal? 
Might not education assist the individual through some 
method of self-activity? Might we not adopt for our 
whole educational system the principle of play ? Man has 
something to learn, something to receive, but also some- 
thing to give and achieve. The educational watchword 
of a former generation, the generation of culture, was 
discipline. The watchword of the present, the genera- 
tion of knowledge, is observation. Might not the future, 



166 THE CHANGING ORDER 

the generation of personality, take for its sign the watch- 
word, play? The need of the hour is education by exe- 
cution, by creation, by modes of self-realization — con- 
trolled always by the motive of helpfulness. By such 
modes alone the personality is extended and the individual 
rounded full-circle. 

The beginnings of such education have been made in 
the kindergarten ; this being the latest, the most modern 
in spirit and most democratic section of our educational 
system. This is the children's age, and a little child 
is leading us away from formalism and traditionalism, 
and compelling a more sincere study of the actual field. 
In the kindergarten the principle of play is frankly 
adopted. The application of the principle in the upper 
grades, where traditional ideas are entrenched, has yet 
to be accomplished. By the introduction of manual 
training, which is only a name for the educational prin- 
ciple of self -activity, a means of self-expression is af- 
forded the older pupils. In the more progressive schools 
there is taking place a reconstruction of the school pro- 
gram with the various art studies as the coordinating 
center. Vacation schools in the larger cities are experi- 
menting with the new ideas, and it is not unlikely that 
the success of their freer methods will bring about ex- 
tensive modifications of the traditional curricula. All 
these are signs of the evolution of play; of the effort 
made by modern man to adopt social forms to current 
idea. 

That this adjustment of man to his immediate environ- 
ment will continue in all the fields of human endeavor, 
there is not the slightest doubt. The evolutionary forces 
are always at work. Nature creates today, as in the 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY 167 

early ages of the world. Man's creative power is deep- 
ening and widening. There are many evidences of in- 
crease in personality, most notably, perhaps, in the arts 
which still afford the field of purest play. I refer par- 
ticularly to the instance of music, the art at present 
in most rapid process of development, the one most cap- 
able of bearing the high emotionalism and the complex 
idealism of the modern world. The history of music 
shows that an enormous distance has been passed from 
Mozart to Brahms. Once the former was thought to 
have reached the perfection of composition. Then came 
Beethoven with newer modes. Then followed Wagner 
and Brahms and Richard Strauss, each adding some- 
thing to the expressiveness of music. Today, Mozart is 
simple, hardly interesting, apprehensible to a child. 
Wagner is now at the point of full reception. But few 
have the capacity to follow the complexities of the latest 
composers. But will not Brahms be as simple to the 
ordinary ear, as Mozart is now to the critical musician? 
What does this growth in apprehension signify, if not 
that the race is advancing farther and farther into the 
interior region, where harmonies are realized and ideals 
formed ? 

In conclusion, the matter may be summed up by saying 
that, at every stage of his being, man has possessed an 
ideal self-determined life, existing side by side with but 
apart from his life as conditioned by material needs. 
The origin of this freedom is lost in the dim evolutionary 
regions ; the poets and scientists postulate a certain de- 
gree of sentient life in the material atom. Certainly, the 
higher animals experience a degree of freedom. In such 
moments, they engage in play. In the lower grades of 



168 THE CHANGING ORDER 

life, this activity is merely play; in the higher grades, 
it takes the rational and significant form of artistic cre- 
ation. 

In some future golden age, foretold by poets and 
prophets, it may be that all work will be play, all speech 
will be song, and joy will be universal. 



DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION. 

I. 

Tfie life of an organism is preserved and fulfilled 
through its right adjustment to environment. If the 
organism fail to accommodate itself to its conditions it 
is doomed to a life of tragic conflict, a weakness increas- 
ing to decay, and to final extinction. The school is an 
agency devised by the social intelligence or instinct to 
prepare the young organism for more effective exist- 
ence. Its function is two-fold : First, to enable the young 
to appropriate the inheritance which the past bequeaths ; 
and, second, to hasten and facilitate their adjustment to 
present conditions and future growths. The first service, 
being fairly constant, tends to maintain in all educational 
institutions that conservatism which so irritates the pro- 
gressive educator whose attention is given to the work of 
readjustment. From the conditions of the problem it 
must be seen that the stability of institutionalism is over- 
come at the fulfillment of the first function. After that 
everything is subject to change according to the varia- 
tion of the social environment. It is at this point that 
institutionalism may become pernicious and subversive. 
A given system becomes conventionalized, loses vitality, 
ceases to move with the times, educates for conditions 
long outgrown, retards progress, and enslaves the very 
life that created it. Then the Promethean soul is bound to 
the rocks and tyrannized over by the Jupiter of custom. 



170 THE CHANGING ORDER 

But evermore, wise through its pains, it destroys the order 
of routine and shapes its life anew. Meanwhile, the ac- 
credited institution is upheld at an enormous waste of 
energy. Individual organisms have been subverted and 
destroyed. The so-called "graduates" of schools, in order 
to be effective in their environment, are required not 
infrequently to overcome the disability of their education. 
If the individual is weak it drags out a wretched life, 
querulous, dyspeptic, and finally perishes. I think the 
life that goes out on battle fields is a small measure of the 
energy wasted in schools. The tragedy of the "educated 
man" is perhaps the most pathetic under the sun; a 
tragedy not less grievous because of its frequency. And 
of these tragic misfits the schools of today, by reason of 
peculiar conditions of transition, are furnishing an un- 
ending line. Our traditions, as those bearing upon 
"school discipline" and "school studies," have reference 
to military, priestly, scholastic, or other special ideals 
of times long past; whereas the necessity of the day is 
for a genuine social being, with varied practical and 
industrial capacities, generous democratic sympathies, 
and inclusive as light. "Where does the great city 
stand?" asks Whitman. 

"Where no monuments exist to heroes, but in the common words 
and deeds, 
Where the men and women think lightly of the laws, 
Where the slave ceases and the master of slaves ceases, 
Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of 

inside authority, 
There the great city stands." 

The question thus viewed is an important one, not to be 



DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 171 

lightly passed : How shall the schools educate in view of 
"triumphant democracy?" I venture to discuss this topic 
in three of its phases: (i) The personal ideal to which 
the modern man owes allegiance; (2) The social ideal to 
which the school should conform; (3) The school work 
calculated to accomplish the ends desired. 



II 



My general thesis may be stated first in abstract terms. 
The conditions of democracy require an education that 
shall be directed to the equipment of the individual in 
respect of his self-sovereignty on the one hand and of 
his socialism on the other. The individual, who shall be 
fitted to live in a democratic community, must be taught 
to control himself as a "simple, separate person" and to 
govern his conduct with reference to his place in the 
social system. Neither phase of his character can be 
safely neglected. Of the two sides, however, the individ- 
ialistic would seem to be the more important, for true 
self-realization is both individualistic and social. By the 
realization and continual enlargement of the self — a self 
that is in its very nature social — the individual comes to 
include the multitude and his right becomes their right 
and his law their law. A genuine federation of men is 
not to be accomplished by the written agreement of 
lawyers, but only through the identification in ideas and 
interests of the separate members of the groups and 
communities. A perfect democracy is possible only with 
persons who are completely developed in every aspect of 
personality, and able therefore to substitute an inner for 



172 THE CHANGING ORDER 

an outer bond of union. Create great individuals, estab- 
lish the right personal ideal — the rest follows. 

When viewed from the standpoint of the democratic 
man, the various ideals about which the imagination and 
sympathies of men have gathered in times past — the 
military ideal, the priestly ideal, the cultural ideal — all 
fall short of measuring the status of the true man of the 
age. The military ideal, formed when the world was 
a great soldiers' camp, was the necessary concomitant 
and support of thrones and empires. Chivalry, furnish- 
ing opportunity for spiritual strivings, was the beauty 
and perfume that attracted to a rigorous ideal the souls 
of finer nurture, and through the ages life has been 
construed by poets and thinkers in terms of warfare — 
terms that have become the very counters of our speech 
and determine the texture of our thinking. From an 
ideal so universal it is difficult for anyone to escape. 
Nevertheless, it is an ideal outgrown and should be ut- 
terly abandoned. It enforces principles of obedience to 
the will of others in authority and interferes with the true 
self-activity proper for the democratic man. Upon the 
model of the military all religious systems and moral 
tenets have been formed, not excepting those of the more 
recent Protestant churches, whose devotion to bishops 
or Bibles or creeds betrays their acceptance of the mili- 
tary principle. It is a simple fact that the religious 
life of all peoples today is grounded in authority of some 
kind. The success of the Salvation Army is an evidence 
of an attitude of mind that would seem to be almost 
universal in matters pertaining to religion. Yet priest- 
craft in all forms is destined to pass away : the army or- 
ganization, the word of command, the obligation of 



DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 173 

service, the deputed authority — all must pass. The ideal 
of culture is based, likewise, on privilege. Learning has 
always been the special instrument of priestcraft. In 
the middle ages learning was a practical monopoly, the 
possession of those who held the symbols of knowledge. 
It was the avenue to place and dignity. Even Dante 
thought it more worthy to be learned than to be a poet. 
The egotism of culture is not less striking today at the 
seats of learning. Culture is exclusive and unsympathet- 
ic. We erect barriers between the wise and the not- 
wise. It is, in fact, obtainable only by the few. Appro- 
priate to the ends of a selfish aristocracy it is destruct- 
ive of that good fellowship requisite for a democracy. 
Democracy demands men and women who are capable 
of self-rule and who, at the same time, are able to com- 
prehend the experiences of other persons sufficient to 
respect their will. All ideals that spring from authority 
or eventuate in privilege must yield to one that is free 
and fluid. 

For the uses of democracy there must be produced 
great individuals "fluid as nature, chaste, affectionate, 
compassionate, fully arm'd." To this end the imagination 
and sympathies of men must become associated with 
the culture of life rather than with the learning of schools. 
To hold up the ideal of a special class — any ideal short 
of the entire personality, is to retard the progress of 
democracy by neutralizing its effects. 



III. 

As the ideal of life is not submissiveness or perfection 



174 THE CHANGING ORDER 

of conduct or intellectual distinction but social sympathy 
or breadth of experience, the test of the school is its sensi- 
tiveness to social influence. It becomes the mission of the 
school to correct the gross egotism of youth that displays 
itself in strife for preferment, in eager pursuit of prizes 
of distinction, by inculcating principles of mutual depend- 
ence and developing a sense of social obligation. The 
degree of relationship felt by the members of a school 
for each other and for the community of which they are 
a part becomes the real test of efficiency. The school, in 
its true modern meaning, is not a group of persons with- 
drawn from society for a period to the end of preparing 
for society when the school years are finished, but a com- 
munity whose activities are ordered according to their 
place in the evolution of life. The home with its varied 
adult interests affords little opportunity for the child's 
self-expression. Into the world of business, motives other 
than educational enter to affect character. The school 
provides community of interest and rightly conducted, 
freed at once from the domestic and economic environ- 
ments, becomes the child's true home, where the bodily 
activities may be trained, where shy emotions may emerge 
and vague thoughts define themselves, and where the 
sense of kinship with others, implicit in the home, may 
enlarge to the outer circumference of the social environ- 
ment. To isolate the child, to require him to be 
silent, to restrict his play, to destroy spontaneity, to 
teach him to be passive and accept authority, is to per- 
petuate feudalism. Only when the rigid book is laid 
aside, the law relaxed, the child surrounded by other 
children in free commerce, when all are permitted to 
question and probe with eager interest, permitted to 



DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 175 

be active and creative — only then is there chance for 
republics. 

From the school as a whole proceed other lines 
of relationship. Under conditions of exclusiveness, 
such as colleges formerly maintained, an antagonism 
between the "town" and the "gown" is inevitably 
occasioned. The presumption of the gown is met by 
the scorn of the town. The scholar, separated from 
the vital currents, shrinks to a pedant; the citizen, 
missing the leadership of thought, swells out to a 
boor. In true community life each needs the other, 
the one that his abstractions may be tested by life, 
the other that life may have meaning. There is noth- 
ing so dead as dead knowledge; there is nothing so 
vapid as a purposeless life. 

From the point of view of social training, the fail- 
ure of the military, priestly and cultural ideals is to 
be noted. For they are essentially non-social and by 
enforcing the external and mechanical dependency 
of one mind upon another tend to break up that so- 
cial connection founded upon sympathy. Graphically 
these older ideals assume the form of a pyramid upon 
the apex of which but the favored few can subsist. 
They imply rank and gradation fatal to community 
life. To the military ideal belong all the irrational 
restrictions incident to "school discipline" that tend 
to destroy individuality of action — restrictions in re- 
spect of natural speech and spontaneous play accord- 
ing to the tyranny of the teacher. The priest depends 
upon some form of revelation and according to his 
authority separates between the good and the not 
good. Culture confirms the tyranny of the book and 



176 THE CHANGING ORDER 

compels in the reader the passive attitude of listen- 
ing. In these ideals there is no place for self-expres- 
sion or for that unity that springs from a community 
of interests. 

The social motive has hardly emerged as yet into 
educational consciousness. Among the newer move- 
ments the "Vacation School" is especially significant. 
Under the excuse of a vacation the ordinary discipline 
is relaxed, the usual routine abandoned, the book set 
aside, the format and mechanical relegated to a sec- 
ondary place. Active and self-directive factors are 
introduced. Sessions are conducted in the open air. 
Nature is studied at first hand. The governing watch- 
words are Impression and Expression. The children 
in some degree seek their own ends — the school run- 
ning parallel with life itself. From these experiments 
in free methods it will doubtless be discovered that 
the pupil in his spontaneous and creative moments is 
a better educational guide than the teacher burdened 
by the feudal traditions. And it is not at all unlikely 
that the spirit of vacation will spread until it perme- 
ates the entire school system. 

Along more definite and conscious lines of school 
development an experiment in genuine democratic 
education was conducted by Professor John Dewey 
at the elementary school formerly in connection with 
the University of Chicago. The passage from the 
aristocratic, the principle of dependency and passiv- 
ity, to the democratic, the principle of originality and 
activity, was there at length completed. The tra- 
ditional equipment, desks, books, studies, monoton- 
ous recitations, examinations, uniform courses and 



DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 1T7 

classes, teachers in authority, — all these were conspic- 
uous in their absence. In their stead were means for 
occupations — for doing things. The school started 
with the natural resources of the child and built upon 
his own interest and desires — his threefold interest 
in discovery, communication, and construction, his 
desire to find out things, to tell things, and to make 
things. In the traditional and feudal school the centre 
of gravity is outside the child — in the teacher, the 
book, the recitation, or the examination ; here the cen- 
tre was found in the child himself. A child in acting 
individualizes himself and forbids the formation of 
classes. He desires, however, to communicate his 
experiences to others and to receive criticism or fur- 
ther suggestion for work. The "recitation" springing 
from this need has the child still at the centre. For 
the doing of things the child needs knowledge — but 
only the knowledge that is related to his need. Ob- 
stacles confront him in carrying out his idea into 
concrete form ; his struggles with his materials consti- 
tute his "discipline," his training in attention, con- 
centration and will. Some organization such as is nec- 
essary for community life is effected; from it arises 
unification and the sense of the social whole. The 
school is a miniature society. 

In so far as these experiments in the new education 
witness to a general tendency they disclose the mod- 
ern transition from authority to freedom, from what 
is mechanical and enforced to what is natural and 
desired. The new factor in education is simply the 
discovery that life itself is education : that the school 
is itself social. 



178 THE CHANGING ORDER 

IV. 

The subjects calculated to develop the democratic in- 
dividual and to effect the socialization of the school 
are manifestly the constructive ones. The foundation 
of modern education should be industrial. And as the 
most educative form of industry is that pertaining to 
art the central activities will be artistic. The arts 
aim to give expression to thought and experience. The 
realization of experience in art forms involves creation 
through self-determined activity. The peculiarity of 
art is that it is in part a discipline, in part a science, 
but in largest measure a creation, the objectification 
of feeling or idea. Hence its immense educational value. 

The best type of the creative arts is music. Music 
is free creation : it makes no reference to natural forms 
and is not, therefore, a product of sensation. Being 
artificial and conventional it becomes the sole crea- 
tion of the inner being. It exposes the very motions of 
the soul and is the personality in its barest guise. For 
a musical idea has two elements, melody and har- 
mony, each of which must first be conceived and dis- 
played in the musical consciousness and then developed 
from within outward. The working out of these con- 
ceptions from consciousness to form gives the best 
type of conceptive development. 

The plastic arts are conceptive in development but de- 
pend more upon imitation. Architecture, however, is 
more like music, an art of idea. Painting takes its rise 
both in idea and in nature. It is therefore at once 
creative and imitative. But painting may be employed 
in education by making the exhibition of the self 



DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 179 

primary and letting the form occupy a subordinate 
place, as indeed it does in the best art. 

Literature, having language as its medium, furnishes 
one of the best means of self-expression. Literature 
serves not only the ends of creation but in its recorded 
forms affords the finest exercise for the creative imag- 
ination in interpretation. Fiction, for instance, is con- 
densed human experience. It records motives, dis- 
plays the operation of cause and effect, analyzes char- 
acter, portrays actual or ideal states of society. To 
read fiction with sympathy is to enter into the history 
of the world and to repeat the processes of the 
mind. To the development of personality literature 
must so be presented that a vital experience results 
from the contact rather than lifeless knowledge to 
encumber the memory. The democratization of art 
means its use as an energizing and creative power. 

In close connection with the fine arts, but employing 
a slightly different set of activities and interests, is 
the group of the industrial arts, or what is more fa- 
miliarly known as the "arts and crafts." The pure 
conceptive process is here interfered with by the neces- 
sity of use. But the more stubborn the material which 
the hand must shape the greater the training in con- 
centration and power. Considering the bearing of 
such training on both the arts and the crafts, the nec- 
essary association of the artistic and industrial tempera- 
ments, the social value of a School of Craft can hardly 
be overestimated. Some day the education of a man 
will be measured by his capacity to do things rather than 
by his knowledge or his receptive faculty. I think no 
one will deny the attainment of William Morris, who 



180 THE CHANGING ORDER 

was called derisively the poet-upholsterer, but who 
thought good upholstery was quite as important as 
good poetry. 

The ordinary trades that have only economic bearing 
have less educational value than work that admits of 
conception. Under higher ideals of life, and with 
the increased use of machinery for the tasks involv- 
ing mere power, the skilled workman will tend to rise 
to the plane of educational industry. 

To constructive work the instructional studies now 
primary will be subordinated. Geography and history 
are the most essential of the related interests. For 
it is possible to pursue these studies actively and to 
realize in imagination the historical life of nature and 
man. "The student," said Emerson, "is to read his- 
tory actively and not passively, to esteem his own life 
the text, and books the commentary.. All history is 
subjective; there is properly no history, only biog- 
raphy." 

But to elaborate a course of construction to take the 
place of the present course of instruction, or to name 
the employments to be substituted for the traditional 
studies, is beyond my intention. My purpose is to in- 
sist that education to be democratized must follow the 
lines of action and expression. 

Democracy, to summarize, presents to the individual 
a new ideal of culture, establishes a new relationship 
among all the members of the social group, and prom- 
ises to displace the disciplinary studies and methods 
by the introduction of a new activity and a new method 
that approximate the play-principle of the creative 
artist. 



"WHERE IS THE POET?" 

Soon after the assassination of President McKinley at 
Buffalo, a question was raised in a public journal with 
reference to the celebration of the event: "Where is the 
Poet?" As a preface to the question the factors tending 
to make the incident worthy of poetic treatment were 
enumerated : 

"The tragedy at Buffalo sounded the whole gamut of human 
emotions. Love, hate, fear, anger, sympathy, compassion — all the 
primal passions were aroused. Nothing could have been more 
dramatic than the spectacle of a single, cowardly, skulking wretch 
throwing a nation into tears. Nothing could have been more 
pathetic than the deep, yet hopeful, silence in which the people 
waited for the news from Buffalo. Nothing could be more inspir- 
ing than the way in which they rallied from the shock and faced the 
future with the confidence that 'God reigns and the government at 
Washington still lives.' Nowhere was ever given a more beautiful 
example of devotion than that which bound together the President 
and his wife. Never was a deathbed illumined more brightly by 
the light of Christian hope and faith. There was everything to 
inspire the poet." 

That the theme was not lacking in elements of sub- 
limity is proved by the witness of another journalist : 

"Let us think, if we can, of the solitudes of mighty forests; 
imagine as we may the majestic sweep of storm-driven clouds lit 
with the forked flame of lightning; let us recall the mystic roar 
of the tireless Niagara; climb in imagination the solitary heights 
of mountain fields; let the mind follow the measureless ranges of 
earth's great highlands, the Rockies, the Andes, the Himalayas, 



182 THE CHANGING ORDER 

and still -the sublimity and the solemnity of all these fade into 
insignificance compared with this more sublime and mystic mani- 
festation of the life in common that summons a tearful nation 
around an open grave." 

Though the pages of magazines teemed at the time with 
verses of a certain order of merit, it must be acknowl- 
edged that the first poem worthy the subject has yet to 
appear. Where, then, was the poet? Was the theme too 
large, was the event too near for poetic treatment ? No — 
for its scope was immediately perceived, as is indicated 
by the quotations given above. We must search else- 
where for an explanation of the poet's silence. May it 
not be that the time has passed when deeds require special 
poetical celebration? Another question obtrudes itself: 
"What is the need of the poet? If all the elements that 
constitute an incident poetic are perceived by the whole 
people with as much clearness as is exhibited by the 
passages quoted, may we not rest in the greatness of the 
fact and take the poet's rhetorical skill for granted? 
Could any poet add anything to the effects conveyed by 
the headlines, the news items, and the illustrations of the 
daily press — for it was by this avenue that all the facts 
of the incident came to the consciousness of the people. 
Let it be remembered that this is the twentieth century, 
and that we are trying in America to realize democratic 
ideals in literature as well as in life. If democratic poli- 
tics means the dispersion of power among the people, 
may not democratic aesthetics mean the dispersion of the 
poetic sense among the same people ? And if a people be 
aesthetically developed, is not the special poetic celebra- 
tion of deeds rendered unnecessary — to the degree, at 
least, of popular participation in the deeds. In the case 



"WHERE IS THE POET?" 183 

referred to the question is readily answered: the ques- 
tioner is himself the answer. 

But now this event in respect to its imaginative quality 
is but typical of the life of the entire American people. 
I venture to affirm that life in America transcends in 
significance any record that can be made of it. With us 
personality is so subtle, it is woven of so many racial 
strands, it is blended of so many associations ; with us 
men move in such masses — like ocean tides ; with us 
events rise with such swiftness, they are knit of so varied 
and complex relations ; nature itself is so vast and expan- 
sive, furnishing an adequate background for dramatic 
incidents : in short history in modern America is so ener- 
gized that persons and objects assume an importance 
in themselves never before discerned, an importance that 
is surely not enhanced by the straining words of the most 
stalwart poet. Once admit that persons and events may 
reach a state that they become themselves poetic, then 
the poetry which is dependent for its effects upon the 
skill of a writer in arranging rhymes and constructing 
phrases to satisfy an exquisite sense for form seems 
unreal and childish. An ode on Lincoln placed by the 
side of Lincoln the man appears an impertinence. What 
Lincoln was and what he did certainly exceed in value 
what he wrote. It seems likely that with the growth of 
democracy the present relationship of literature and life 
will be reversed. Up to this time literature has been the 
leader ; it must now learn to serve. Literature has been 
accorded the superior position because it has been su- 
perior. It has been the home of ideals and representative 
of freedom. But life has been in bondage to its own con- 



184 THE CHANGING ORDER 

ditions. Unable to live freely men have dreamed of free- 
dom. Arnold said of the great Goethe : 

"He looked on Europe's dying hour 
Of fitful dream and feverish power; 
His eye plunged down the weltering strife, 
The turmoil of expiring life: 
He said, The end is everywhere, 
Art still has truth, take refuge there!" 

So art has been the refuge of the despairing man. Men 
have represented in art what they have desired in their 
inmost soul. Art is life shaped after the heart's desire. 
European literature has been superior to its life since the 
literature represents the ideals which the life could not 
exhibit. Shelley's life was ineffectual, but his poetry 
was prophesy. The poet knew from experience the truth 
of his remark : 

"Most wretched men 
Are cradled into poetry by wrong, 
They learn in suffering what they teach in song." 

The literature of Europe, furthermore, has been aristo- 
cratic and descriptive of feudal relations because kings 
and nobles have alone been privileged to live in compara- 
tive freedom. The only life possible to depict, such as 
men desired for themselves, was the life of the upper 
classes. In modern and democratic America the re- 
straints are in some measure removed, the fetters are 
broken, the energies of the people are given free play, 
and life itself, for the first time in history, becomes 
positive and creative. The industrial supremacy of 
America in the world to-day arises from the conditions 
of democracy: it implies first of all removal of limita- 



"WHERE IS THE POET?" 185 

tions. Now when ideals are brought down into the 
market-place and the factory, when doing is more highly 
regarded than dreaming, life itself is able to be a fine art, 
tragic or lyric, ordered well or ill, romantic or real. Then 
it is possible to read history as an open page: things be- 
come words, the factory and field form the stage, the 
workers appear as heroes, their work is heard as a song. 
If the truth of this statement be conceded that life in 
America is superior to literature, another question is 
disposed of which is frequently asked. "When will 
America enter upon its due artistic development?" The 
thought behind this question is of course that art is the 
measure of civilization and any other form of culture is 
ignoble and despicable. We shall not rise to the rank of 
a great people, it is assumed, until upon the basis of a 
material civilization a temple of art be reared. In this 
view all our past history amounts to nothing except as 
a preparation for artistic products. When we have 
gained wealth enough to afford the fullest opportunity 
for leisure, then, it is urged, we shall proceed to cultivate 
the refinements and humanities; when we have enacted 
our Iliad, the time will come for its recording. It is 
clear that in the minds of these cynics the idea held of the 
"humanities" is that in vogue in Europe in the period of 
aristocracy. Then, truly, art represented the adornment 
and entertainment of the noble and leisure classes. But 
an art of this type is no longer possible. In the first 
place the ideal of life in a democracy pertains not to leis- 
ure but to activity. In the second place there is not the 
slightest sign anywhere that the men who are doing the 
world's work are tiring of their strenuous exercise. We 
believe in work and are actually finding in our work the 



186 THE CHANGING ORDER 

highest satisfaction. In truth work is, with us, as has 
been said, "a form of noble exercise/' The time hoped 
for by the literary cavillers will never come. The new 
"humanities" relate not to leisure but to labor. The 
standard of our civilization is not artistic but industrial: 
we are to proceed from an industry that is crude to one 
that is fine, not from a condition of labor without art 
to a condition of leisure with art. This must involve 
the absorption of the artistic sense in actual living: it 
must mean that poetry is to inhere in what we do rather 
than in what we write : it must mean that heroes are to be 
found in the men who walk the streets. I am not in the 
least displeased at the absence of great art in America, 
well knowing that what has disappeared is not the essence 
but only the form. I derive more satisfaction from the 
daily papers than from romantic fiction and am more 
pleased with secular magazines like the World's Work 
than with literary journals like the Atlantic Monthly. 

If I have interpreted aright the phenomena of an in- 
dustrial civilization ; if it be true that the men who built 
cathedrals and wrote great epics are now exercising 
genuine creative genius in the field of work ; if instead of 
discarding a material civilization it is the part of wise 
men to humanize that civilization, then it appears to be 
necessary that the factors existing most closely in rela- 
tion to these phenomena be held in higher estimation 
than they have hitherto been. My thesis is that in 
America, in democracy, that is, life itself absorbs the 
genius hitherto directed in artistic lines. 

From this point of view the newspapers take on a new 
importance. Their function is to convey to readers the 
news of a day — to describe the incidents of the day, to 



"WHERE IS THE POET?" 187 

picture the men and women who have on that day done 
some deed or suffered some fate worthy of record. He 
who is unable to extract romance, tragedy, poetry or truth, 
from the morning's paper is not yet adjusted to the con- 
ditions of modern life. 

Given the facts of life as reported over a wide area by 
the daily paper, it is the function of the poet and novelist 
to interpret a select series of facts with such skill that 
their readers discern, as unaided they are perhaps not able 
to discern, the inmost reality of the facts admitted. 

One poet at least among the American writers has fully 
comprehended the power and significance of fact and 
shifted his ground from transcendentalism to reality. 
Walt Whitman is the first practical democrat in litera- 
ture. His case is interesting and illustrative. Before he 
began to write he made this direction in his note book: 
"Beware lest your poems are made in the spirit that comes 
from the study of pictures of things and not from the 
spirit that comes from the contact with real things them- 
selves." Elsewhere he had declared his conviction that 
modern poets might take the same departure in poetry 
that Lord Bacon had taken in science and emerge directly 
from nature and its laws and from things and facts — 
not from what is said about them, the stereotyped fancies 
or abstract ideas of the beautiful. Hence we find in his 
poems such sentiments as these: "I am enamored of 
growing out of doors ;" "the press of my foot to the earth 
springs a hundred affections;" "a morning-glory at my 
window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books ;" 
"I swear there can be no theory of any account unless 
it corroborate the theory of the earth." His poems open 



188 THE CHANGING ORDER 

to the modern world not only the theory of the earth, but 
also that of space and time : 

"Haughty this cry its words and scope 
To span vast realms of space and time, 
Evolution — the cumulative growths and generations." 

It is instructive to note how the adoption of cosmical 
standards influenced his poetic method. Trying his art 
by the concrete, he found the tests applicable to his poems 
were of such exacting character that he was freed from 
all ordinary artistic and technical requirements. He 
fancied the ocean, the mountains and forests putting 
their spirit in a judgment on his book. Then upon the 
concrete, though always fluid and rhythmic forms of 
nature, he actually based his lines. In certain of his 
catalogues of objects the presentation of facts returns al- 
most to the rudiments of perception and language. But, 
plainly, the poetry resides not in the words, but in the 
objects. Literary cynics, trained in the literature of words, 
scoff at his recitals. And of course he who feels no poetry 
in life or nature will find no poetry in Whitman. But he 
to whom the names New York, Chicago, San Francisco 
convey images of vast cities with panoramic views and 
moving tides of men, will thrill to Whitman's every page. 
And not only did Whitman imitate the forms of nature, but 
he caught its spirit and expressed himself freely and 
frankly. Without any more explanation, excuse or se- 
lection than the earth makes in the unceasing round of 
creation, Whitman emulated the processes, amplitudes, 
coarseness, equilibrium and great charity of nature. I 
speak here of Whitman at some length for the reason 
that he furnishes the only complete illustration of what 



"WHERE IS THE POET?" 189 

literature will be when the transition I have referred to 
in the first part of this paper occurs. 

The doom of romantic fiction has already been pro- 
nounced — pronounced, let us say, by the "fates," since 
tendency itself forbids its continuance. Nothing can be 
more grotesque and absurd than the so-called "historic 
novel" of the day — it is grotesque because it is unreal, 
it is absurd because it is opposed to the whole tendency 
of modern civilization. Its vogue indicated a temporary 
insanity of the public mind. It rose into favor during the 
time the people were cultivating a barbaric spirit of war. 
The great number of such stories is due to the fact that 
any third- or fourth-rate writer can invent an historic 
novel. It requires no originality to play with puppets — 
no thought is called for, no insight into life, no experience. 
An historic novel may be written according to receipt — 
such as Pope gave in the eighteenth century for the com- 
position of epics. 

The interest of democracy is in character and the 
course of events. "The life of man," said Emerson, "is 
the true romance, which, when it is valiantly conducted, 
will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction." 
To the same effect Whitman said : "As soon as histories 
are properly told there is no more need of romances." 
Bernard Shaw regards romance as "the great heresy to 
be rooted out from art and life." "To me," he remarks, 
"the tragedy and comedy of life lie in the consequences, 
sometimes terrible, sometimes ludicrous, of our persistent 
attempt to found our institutions on the ideas suggested 
to our imagination by our half-satisfied passions 
instead of on a genuinely scientific natural history." So 
it happens that fiction is the last place one would go to 



190 THE CHANGING ORDER 

to elaborate a natural history. When Whitman tells the 
truth about life we are shocked — not because the things 
told are true, but because they are told. The fault is not 
with experience, but with the makers of literature. 

If a complete record could be made of the life of any 
one who has attained distinction in the world of affairs — 
if a frank and full confession were made of thoughts, 
feelings, motives and deeds — such a record would surpass 
in interest the most imaginative tale of the fiction 
mongers. Yet such a record does not exist in literature. 
Ordinarily the man who does things cannot write, and the 
man who writes cannot do things. Such a record as we 
have is dependent upon the sympathetic understanding of 
other lives by the imaginative writer. David Harum was 
drawn doubtless from a live model, but why not report the 
real life of an actual David. Mary MacLane has placed 
on record the inner history of her life for a given period — - 
does it detract from the literary interest of the book that 
Mary MacLane is a real woman? John W. Mackay 
is dead ; why not publish his "Life and Letters ?" I know 
of nothing finer in literature than Grant's Memoirs. With 
a little encouragement the great silent men, the men who 
do things, might be persuaded to keep journals and note- 
books, to write familiar letters and finally to attempt their 
autobiographies. The field of biography is infinite in 
scope and profound in its meanings. Upon its cultiva- 
tion depends the future of literature in America. 

At the present time it is the field of industry which is 
most open to the creative energies. Romantic realism has 
passed from the church, it has left the army, 
it is just disappearing from the state. It reap- 
pears in the school, but its manifestation is 



"WHERE IS THE POET?" 191 

most apparent in business. Speculation, adventure, dis- 
covery are still possible in a business career. One knows 
what churchmen and statesmen will say before their 
message is uttered ; for the life they deal with is stereo- 
typed. In modern industrialism life is a game, a form of 
exercise, requiring insight, imagination, creative ability, 
culture. I almost envy the fortune which has given to 
such writers as Hamlin Garland, Owen Wister and Frank 
Norris, the education necessary to write characteristic 
chapters of the Epic of the West. I envy more the chance 
enabling other men to play the role of epical heroes. 
These men are to me intensely interesting. I have just 
been reading a clever sketch of Charles T. Yerkes, writ- 
ten by T. P. O'Connor, the Irish journalist. This is the 
man as he appears to a foreign observer : 

"A man rather below the middle height — with a heavy 
snow-white moustache, a pale complexion; with that 
slight tendency towards an enlarged girth that comes with 
middle age ; with white hair, with fine dark eyes, and with 
a soft voice and a subdued manner— such is Mr. Yerkes. 
The first, indeed the supreme and most lasting, impres- 
sion he makes upon you is serenity. He comes, I believe, 
of Quaker blood, and the face is a Quaker face, with 
that quietism which is and always remains the expres- 
sion of the man or woman who has begun life amid the 
prolonged silences and the stern self-discipline and self- 
control of the Society of Friends. The voice — soft, low, 
never raised above a minor key — is in perfect accord with 
the expression ; and the eyes — with their curious immo- 
bility and a certain sweetness, and last the least touch of 
mocking humor — complete this picture of one of those 
silent, quiet, iron men that rule the storm and ride the 



192 THE CHANGING ORDER 

cyclone in the elemental and Titantic wars of American 
industry. 

"The pallor of the complexion, ivory in its intensity, yet 
indicates health, not fragility — a certain distinction and 
refinement — as of a man who has always exercised self- 
restraint, and who has never poisoned his system and 
colored his cheeks with the flowing wine or the overboun- 
teous, overladen table. And Mr. Yerkes is, indeed, a man 
who has sternly controlled himself. He never takes tea 
nor coffee, and he never smokes, though he may be 
tempted into a couple of glasses of light champagne at 
dinner. And yet, with all this impression of supreme 
serenity, you cannot be with the man for more than half 
an hour without becoming conscious of all the iron 
strength there is behind the ivory cheek, the soft brown 
eye, the low voice. He speaks slowly, with something of 
the characteristic American drawl, and he seems much 
more disposed to listen than to talk — unless he finds that 
the atmosphere is sympathetic and appreciative and that 
he can reveal his inner self. 

"And then you hear talk worth listening to. Cold, 
easy, with every word spoken slowly and every word com- 
ing out as clear cut, as fitted to the word that has pre- 
ceded and will follow as though he were making a mosiac 
of jewels. Mr. Yerkes tells the tale of his life; of his 
conflicts ; of his enemies ; of his friends, and often leaving 
these behind, he sums up his theory of the world and his 
lessons from life in some anecdote told with brevity, 
without a superfluous word, with quiet but expressive 
gesture — above all, with full appreciation of the dramatic 
points." 

I rub my eyes a little at these statements, for this is not 



"WHERE IS THE TOET?" 193 

the Yerkes I have been told of in Chicago. But I am 
ready to admit that hitherto my eyes have not been open. 
The notice concludes after more detailed characteriza- 
tion: 

"Such is the man that has undertaken the gigantic task 
of revolutionizing our methods of locomotion in London. 
Curiously enough, the accumulation of money has been 
rather an accident than a purpose of this strange and 
potent man's life. He speaks of tramways, of electric 
light, electric power, with a quiet passion which you 
might expect from Mr. John Sargeant talking of a pic- 
ture; from Paderewski talking of music; and when he 
begins to describe the smoke, the closeness, the incon- 
veniences of steam engines in our underground, there is 
a look of positive pain in his features. To make an under- 
ground system which will be clean, cheap, fast, worked 
by electricity — a joy instead of a horror — such is the am- 
bition of Mr. Yerkes. 'I have never,' he said, 'interested 
myself, in anything but tramways and traction ; that's my 
business, and I've never gone one second outside that 
business. And men are judged usually by their last 
work. This is my last work ; this is my final ambition.' 

"Such are my impressions of that strange, new portent, 
the American millionaire, that, sighing for new worlds to 
conquer, has come to London to reverse our methods, to 
startle and renew our old systems and methods, to bring 
to Europe the gigantic projects, the fearless daring, that 
are so characteristic of America, with her rivers that are 
seas, her states that are continents, her simple private 
citizens that are forces more potent than armies, or fleets, 
or Czars." 

Such are the fruits of democracy. Add to what is now 



194 THE CHANGING ORDER 

known of men, the knowledge of nature revealed by 
science, and one is forced to admit that the world as 
modernly conceived transcends in imaginative significance 
the highest fictions of poet and novelist. 



THE NEW DOCTRINE OF LABOR. 

If it be true, as political economists assert, that an in- 
dustrial civilization is now forming, it becomes pertinent 
to inquire what attitude it is proper to assume towards 
labor — towards that which is necessarily central in such 
a civilization. It is manifestly impossible to build up a 
civilization on the basis of labor as it exists in the world 
today. If labor is to be a factor in civilization it must be 
itself a civilizing agency. No one can be so blind to ex- 
isting conditions as to assert that labor at the present 
time is anything but a sordid makeshift, without character 
and without meaning. The questions now which arise in 
the mind are these: Is there an ideal of labor human- 
istic in its import? Is there a form of labor cultural in 
its results ? 

The theological doctrine of labor is probably every- 
where outgrown — the doctrine that labor is a curse, in- 
flicted upon mankind for disobedience and sin. In the 
middle ages the theological interpretation of life coin- 
cided with the system of political feudalism then forming, 
and a social civilization came into being in which the work 
of the world was given over to slaves and underlings, 
the masters meanwhile maintaining a cultured grace with 
special privileges, highly ornate and ceremonial, fashioned 
upon leisure. 

Political feudalism was destroyed by the many revolu- 
tions in Europe at the turn of the century. While these 
revolutions were nominally political they were in reality 
industrial. The French Revolution initiated the present 



196 THE CHANGING ORDER 

industrial system. This system is purely materialistic, 
taking its rise in the general skepticism and rationalism 
of the eighteenth century. Labor lost its stigma ; it rose 
to the position of a commodity. Economic considerations 
determined its value. The nexus between master and 
man ceased to be personal, feudal, religious, or political, 
and came to be impersonal, economic, and mathematical. 
Work was undertaken from necessity — the degree of 
necessity being measured by the wage. The present in- 
dustrial order is therefore based upon material goods and 
properties. There is no spiritual principle present any- 
where in it. Labor, viewed as a commodity, as something 
for which a price is paid, is simply an incident in an ex- 
change which is formal, brutal, without sentiment, with- 
out the spirit of service, and with no cultural attachments 
or rewards of any sort. The struggle in the industrial 
world is between those who have and those who have not. 
The ordinary laborer accepts the materialistic valuation 
of his services and strikes for the only thing which has 
worth in his eyes — a higher wage, a reward, that is, in 
terms of property. His demand is quantitative, and is, 
of course, of the same kind as the quantitative civiliza- 
tion he helps to maintain. 

The word civilization has been employed here, but the 
term is quite inappropriate. Civilization refers to a cer- 
tain quality of life and not to an accumulation of goods. 
It would seem that if the industrial system is to endure 
it must change its character to harmonize with the ideas 
of those humanistic philosophers who have conceived of 
a culture suitable for an aspiring and spiritual race. To 
accomplish this change it will be necessary to promulgate 
a new doctrine of labor, and to effect a revolution in the 



THE NEW DOCTRINE OF LABOR 197 

character of labor itself. Must labor always be measured 
materially by alien standards ? May it not have spiritual 
rewards? May it not find its value in itself? May not 
life become expressive — may not labor, that is, be con- 
ducted in the line of one's own life? Why should educa- 
tion be always leisuristic? Is it not possible for work to 
be cultural ? May it not even be religious ? Might it not 
gather to itself the sentiments which humanize and 
civilize ? 

The new doctrine of labor was enunciated first of all 
in England by Carlyle. In its simplest form it stands on 
his pages thus : "It is the first of all problems for a man 
to find out what kind of work he is able to do in this 
universe." Work, as to its import, is character, knowl- 
edge, power, life. "He that has done nothing has known 
nothing." Thus understood, when regarded as having 
cultural rewards, work becomes perverted the moment it 
demands a wage and falls under bondage to Mammon. 
"The wages of every noble work," said Carlyle, "do yet 
lie in Heaven, or else nowhere." 

These statements of Carlyle were elaborated by his 
pupil Ruskin and realized in practice by Ruskin's pupil 
Morris. But apart from a relatively small number of 
workshops here and there, it must be confessed the doc- 
trine of "labor as a pleasure in itself" is practically inop- 
erative in the modern world. Yet it is the ideal which 
must inform the world if advance is to be made in the di- 
rection of a rational industrial civilization. By its appli- 
cation alone, by the changes wrought in the character 
and substance of labor itself, will it be possible to escape 
the materialism of present day commerce and its soul- 
destroying wage-slavery. 



198 THE CHANGING ORDER 

If a change in our attitude toward work and a change 
in the nature of the work itself — if these changes can at 
once be effected, the two claims now made by employees of 
employers for a higher wage and a shorter day will be ren- 
dered nugatory. If the rewards of labor can be attached 
to labor itself, if it should not be necessary on the one 
hand to search for a culture outside of one's employ- 
ments, and on the other hand to consider an equivalent 
for labor in another medium, the main objects for which 
labor unions exist and on account of which strikes are 
entered upon would become secondary and unimportant. 
In accepting a wage as the measure of efficiency, in de- 
manding rewards in forms of property, the labor unions 
are in truth subjecting themselves to the bondage of 
economic materialism and are losing such advantages as 
might come from a spiritual interpretation of life. The 
struggle for higher wages is one thing — the motive being 
purely materialistic and selfish ; the struggle to be freed 
from wage slavery altogether is quite another thing and 
must involve a certain idealistic perception. If the 
struggle for property continues as insistent as it now is 
there is nothing but strife and eventually revolution to 
look forward to. If an evolutionary advance is to be ex- 
pected, improvement must arise from a change in direc- 
tion and an acceptance of a new point of view. For again 
real improvement is qualitative and not quantitative. Will 
Chicago teachers, who joined the Federation of Labor, 
materialize their own function and motives by accepting 
the economic doctrine of labor, or will they help to edu- 
cate and spiritualize this body by upholding a new doc- 
trine of labor and disclosing the play of a social motive ? 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART. 

"I feel that in this class I have been given a key to 
something rightfully belonging to me, but which some- 
how or other I have been cheated out of up to this time. 
I have been compelled to spend time over 'the dainty 
figures' of Collins and the 'sentimentality' of Gray, but 
always under protest. A serious and rational human 
being can have little interest in these things. You have 
let me see the real significance of great literature." 

Such was the note of commendation I received not 
long ago from one of my pupils. I may be pardoned for 
placing it at the head of this paper since in answering the 
letter I was led to formulate more definitely than I had 
done before the few principles which had governed my 
study and interpretation of literature. 

"Been given a key to something rightfully belonging 
to me, but which somehow or other I have been cheated 
out of up to this time." This sentence, it will be ob- 
served, is the record of a revelation ; it is at the same time 
a statement of a claim and of an arraignment. A reader 
has a right to the whole truth of literature, a right to 
appropriate for his own enrichment whatever has entered 
into the composition of a work of art. In the case of great 
literature which embodies not only a great personality, 
but also the essential life of a whole people, or it may be 
the vital forces of a complete epoch, it is not to be ex- 
pected that everyone will have the capacity to assimilate 
its entire substance. But it has been my experience that 



200 THE CHANGING ORDER 

success in the study of literature is due largely to one's 
ability to bring himself into right relationship to a given 
subject. It is mainly a question of attitude. If a given 
literature be approached from the right point of view, and 
in the right spirit, the appropriation is dependent then 
solely upon the capacity of the reader to receive; but i£ 
through the ignorance or carelessness or actual incom- 
petency of the teacher, the student is turned away from 
the true path to the "mountain of vision," he has a right 
to bring a charge of deception and fraud against the 
teacher or critic. Personally I feel the responsibility of 
a teacher in perhaps an excessive degree ; I should hate 
to have it said of me that I was a blind guide to the blind. 
It is the function of teachers to provide pupils with keys — 
to use the figure of my correspondent — and in literature 
there is the key philogical, the key philosophical and 
ethical, the key psychological, the key historical, the key 
sesthetical, and, I will add as something relatively new, 
the key sociological. It was the last of these keys, I may 
mention, which had been placed in the hands of the class 
referred to, and this key did in truth appear to unlock 
unsuspected stores of material which other keys, least of 
all the sesthetical, had failed to uncover. I call this key the 
sociological for the reason that I first learned its use from 
a sociologist. It was another sociologist who most 
clearly defined for me the true nature of literature. How- 
ever, as a matter of fact, the application of social prin- 
ciples has been a marked feature of recent criticism, even 
that of professional critics. It is seen that only when 
literature is considered as one of the arts, and when art is 
considered as one of the processes of idealization by 
which all psychic forms and social institutions are shaped, 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART 201 

that its proper place appears in the circle of social agents. 
The reason for the late appearance of social criticism 
would seem to be that not until recently has it been pos- 
sible to connect the facts of organic evolution with the 
processes involved in the development of a poetic idea. 

Art, it may be argued, is one product of the creative 
imagination. The same imagination precedes religious 
prophesy, philosophic speculation, scientific hypothesis, 
mechanical invention, and social construction. Thought 
itself is an idealizing process, a form, that is, of "creative 
synthesis" — to use the terms of Professor Lester Ward, 
one of the sociologists mentioned above. And deeper 
still the subjective evolution of mind is paralleled by the 
objective evolution of nature. In the organic world the 
course of evolution is from the homogeneous to the hetero- 
geneous through successive differentiations. An undiffer- 
entiated plasm contained the potency of all the varied 
forms evolved from it. In the same way a poetic idea, as 
Ward states it, "is homogeneous undifferentiated truth" — 
it is a psychological plasm with the power of development 
in a number of directions, but, in its first forms, character- 
ized by vagueness and indefmiteness. The illustration 
of such "poetic idea" given by Ward is Emerson's state- 
ment of the truth of evolution in an essay published in 
1836, and antedating Darwin's "Origin of Species" by 
twenty-three years : 

"And striving to be man, the worm 
Mounts through all the spires of form." 

In this instance the differentiation of the poetic idea took 
place in science. In other cases the differentiation occurs 
in sociology. The condition of progress in the different 



202 THE CHANGING ORDER 

fields is essentially the same — and this condition is stated 
by none so well as by Emerson in the passage just cited : 
namely the psychic power of forming ideals. Creative 
imagining is the first step ; this is followed by efforts to 
realize the ideal conceived, in some concrete objective 
way. Man, as John is made to say in Browning's 
"Death in the Desert :" 

"Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact, 
And in this striving, this converting air 
Into a solid he may grasp and use, 
Finds progress, man's distinctive mark." 

It happens that John's illustration of the process is taken 
from the art of sculpture : 

"The statuary ere he mold a shape 
Boasts a like gift, the shape's idea, and next 
The aspiration to produce the same; 
So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout, 
Cries ever 'Now I have the thing I see': 
Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought, 
From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself." 

But now these poetic conceptions may be of many 
kinds. If a poet be warm-hearted, sympathetic, highly 
sensitive to the imperfections of the social order, whereby 
injustice and suffering fall heavily upon men, it is quite 
inevitable that he turn his attention to social reconstruc- 
tion. The nineteenth century has been well called the 
Century of humanity: for during this period psychology 
became social, and few there were not conscious of the 
imperfections of the social order and uninfected by 
Shelley's "passion of reforming the world." There were 
some who were timid and abstracted, and did not go farth- 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART 203 

er than to outline dreamily a Utopian scheme of society. 
The aggressive types entered militantly into a program of 
revolution. Whatever the poet did he remained the poet. 
If he wrote for a people a new constitution he was still 
the poet. If he established a new institution he was not 
less the poet. John Ruskin's "socialism," his Society for 
the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, his Village In- 
dustries Movement, his Society of St. George, not less 
than his verses and paintings and criticisms, are evidences 
of poetic idealization. Morris did not consider it a degra- 
dation that he subordinated poetry to craftsmanship and 
social reform. Where should Victor Hugo be placed if 
not in the front ranks of political liberals ? Berlioz handled 
a musket at the barricades in Paris. Byron and Shelley 
were active revolutionists in the political and social 
spheres. Wagner joined the later revolutionary move- 
ment in Europe. Tolstoi is perhaps the foremost advo- 
cate of social reconstruction in the modern world. These 
men exercised their creative genius in producing a social 
art, an art that is greater in some respects than the 
aesthetic art we have been accustomed to. 

The scientific explanation of social art was left for 
Ward in his "Pure Sociology" already referred to. The 
poetic explanation of the same phenomena will be found 
in Shelley's "Defence of Poetry," the full import of which 
has been strangely overlooked. The first conception ap- 
peared thus some eighty years before the facts were 
known scientifically. "Poetry," said Shelley, "in a gen- 
eral sense, may be defined to be the 'expression of the 
imagination/ ' This led to the affirmation that all forms 
of order and beauty, according to which the materials of 
human life are susceptible of being arranged, are poetry, 



204 THE CHANGING ORDER 

in the universal sense. "Poets are not only the authors of 
language, and of music, of the dance, and architecture, 
and statuary, and painting; they are the institutors of 
laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors 
of the arts of life, and the teachers of religion." Because- 
of the secondary nature of the written poetry of Rome, 
and of the perfection there of political and domestic so- 
ciety, Shelley spoke of Roman art as social: "The true 
poetry of Rome lived in its institutions ; for whatever of 
beautiful, true and majestic, they contained, could have 
sprung only from the faculty which creates the order in 
which they consist." 

Shelley not only defined poetry in terms of society, but 
he was also interested in the interaction of the poet and 
the social system. Poetry, he perceived, "is connate with 
the origin of man." Illustrations of the social origin of 
poetry are given in the "Defence of Poetry," but the full 
elaboration of the principle is contained in a recent volume 
by Professor Gummere, entitled "The Beginnings of 
Poetry." Professor Gummere regards all literature as 
the expression of man's social nature. "Poetry," he de- 
fines, "like music, is social; like its main factor rhythm, 
it is the outcome of communal consent, a faculte d' en- 
semble \ and this should be writ large over every treatise 
in poetry, in order to draw the mind of the reader from 
that warped and baffling habit which looks upon all 
poetry as a solitary performance." "In rhythm," I quote 
further, "in sounds of the human voice, timed to move- 
ments of the human body, mankind first discovered that 
social consent which brought the great joys and great 
pains of life into a common utterance." 

These statements are corroborated in a monograph of 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART 205 

still later date, issued by Professor Tufts, and entitled "On 
the Genesis of the Aesthetic Categories." One of his 
theses is stated in the following terms: "Art has its 
origins, almost without exception, in social relations ; it 
has developed under social pressure ; it has been fostered 
by social occasions ; it has in turn served social ends in 
the struggle for existence. In consequence, the values 
attributed to aesthetic objects have social standards, and 
the aesthetic attitude will be determined largely by these 
social antecedents. Or, in other words, the explanation 
of the aesthetic categories is to be sought largely in social 
psychology." Beyond a doubt these utterances repre- 
sent the trend of the most authoritative modern thinking 
on the subject. 

And what literature is as to its origin it remains as to 
its progress and development. There is never a time in 
the history of literature when it is not possible to test its 
value according to its derivation from and its contribu- 
tion to the whole of human life. There is no great writer 
at any time who is not in the main a teacher of social 
ideals. The mere singer, the unsocial egotist who ignores 
the broad democratic social ties, may himself be ignored 
by modern criticism, as failing to meet the requirements 
of the social method of interpretation. 

It was what I have just called the social method of in- 
terpretation as distinguished from the individualistic 
aesthetic that Whitman had in mind when in "Good Bye 
my Fancy" he expressed his opinion in these terms: 
"My own opinion has long been, that for New World 
service our ideals of beauty (inherited from the Greeks) 
need to be radically changed, and made anew for to- 
day's purposes and finer standards." Whitman's own 



206 THE CHANGING ORDER 

poetry is, of course, social in its origin and nature and, 
like Shelley's poetry, with which it is very closely allied, 
makes no pretense to conform to aesthetic standards, but 
displays its real merits to the critic capable of social fel- 
lowship. 

The time would seem to be ripe for a shifting of the 
critical point of view. Criticism has been occupied with 
individualistic estimation; it has considered literature as 
a product of individual genius ; it has written text-books 
of literature which treat of individual authors as unre- 
lated to time or place. This is done in the face of the fact 
that not one of the sciences considers man today in isola- 
tion, that philosophy finds no significance in the individual 
apart from society, that psychology itself traces mind to 
its source in nature. Gossip about authors is, of course, 
intrusive, the veriest impertinence. One man is no more 
worthy of regard than another, except as he is more repre- 
sentative, except as he incarnates more of the Time- 
Spirit, except as he is more absorptive with respect to 
heredity and environment. If the artist be such an inclu- 
sive individual, personalities fall aside, mere dexterity in 
the handling of materials counts for little, the merits 
which have seemed to attach to vocabulary, style, con- 
struction, species ir kind of literature, are held in second- 
ary consideration. Aesthetic criticism is today overspecial- 
ized and to the degree of its specialization it has lost con- 
tact with life. What should count are the typical quali- 
ties, the democratic averages, imaginative sympathy, 
idealization, the social forces. 

Evidences accumulate of the dawning of the social 
sense in modern art. I have already referred to Shelley 
and Whitman as illustrating a poetry socialized in its 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART 207 

main effects. A notable instance of a somewhat obscure 
type of social art is furnished by Wagner's music-dramas. 
The striking feature of Wagner's dramas is the complete 
unity effected of several different arts in the interest of 
the drama as a whole. The dramatic unity involves here 
the subordination of the separate arts of music, poetry, 
and acting, hitherto existing in specialized form. There 
could not be a better illustration of what necessarily fol- 
lows upon socialization. When each individual art con- 
tributes its impulse to the whole the total effect is well 
nigh overwhelming. In order to increase the social 
bearings of the work, philosophic and religious ideals 
were embodied, the dramas being dedicated to the Ger- 
man people to foster nationality. There could not be a 
better illustration also of the failure of the current criti- 
cism. The criticism which at first assailed Wagner was 
of course of the more aesthetic type. No one of his critics 
had the insight to perceive that a new art had been given 
to the world, or the sagacity to adjust his criticism to 
the conditions of art purposely subdued to social uses. 
Tolstoi throws the weight of his great name to the 
side of social criticism. His "What is Art?" contains the 
fullest and most elaborate discussion of the social theory 
that has yet appeared. Discarding the metaphysical and 
aesthetic theories of art, as leading to work tending to be- 
come exclusive and debased, Tolstoi reaches a definition 
of art distinctly social in its import: "The infection of 
one man by another with the feelings experienced by the 
infector." And as it is the first requirement of social art 
that it be actually socialized, that is, that it reach and in- 
fluence as many members of the social order as possible, 
its special mission is to transmit the truth that "well- 



208 THE CHANGING ORDER 

being for men consists in being united together/' or, in 
other words, to "establish brotherly union among men." 
It is clear that the art calculated to effect the union of 
men is of a kind totally different from an art intended to 
please the educated taste of the aesthetic classes. "Good 
taste," of the kind that creates divisions among men, or 
that exalts one man above another, is the least desirable 
faculty to educate in a democracy. Sympathy and univer- 
sality are the marks of great modern art. 

We now perceive also that the criticism of Ruskin and 
Morris — of all the great moderns, indeed, who are moved 
by the spectacle of "man's inhumanity to man," is of the 
social type. "I say," said Ruskin in the first volume of 
Modern Painters, "that art is the greatest, which conveys 
to the mind of the spectator, the greatest number of the 
greatest ideas." "Painting, or art generally," he says 
again, "is nothing but a noble and expressive language, 
invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself noth- 
ing." "By itself nothing" — in these words condemning 
an art which exists by reason of the beauty of its tech- 
nique, or the glory of its words, or the perfection of its 
form. "No weight, or mass, nor beauty of execution can 
outweigh one grain or fragment of thought." 

Add to such statements the sayings of Morris on 
the subject of art and we begin to gather a body of 
social criticism respectable in its amount and influen- 
tial in its appeal. "By art, I understand," said Morris, 
"the pleasure of life," and it became the aspiration of 
his heart and mind to restore to the people that pleas- 
ure of life which had been lost to them through the 
refinement and abstraction of the art impulse. 

What will be the outcome of such criticism? What 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART 209 

will the new art come to be when redeemed from 
specialization and created by and for the people? 

Doubtless America furnishes the opportunity for 
the freest play of the social impulses. Although our 
art is in considerable measure traditional and aristo- 
cratic, there are yet evidences of fundamental 
changes taking place in the conception of art, which 
bring production more in harmony with the modern 
forces. American literature as a whole and in its main 
phases is a social literature — a literature devised, that 
is, for purposes of social communication. The first 
literary products in the New World were a child's 
primer, a hymn-book, and an almanac. A people 
whose government is republican must necessarily 
proceed by debate and persuasion. Identity of inter- 
ests and ideas must be created and maintained. For 
this reason the literary spirit of America is manifest 
not so much in its poetry as in its prose, and its 
greatest prose is found in certain political documents 
and in the addresses of its great publicists. Of style 
in the technical sense there is little in the typical 
American prose. A speaker who wishes to address 
all minds and carry conviction to all hearts will not 
divert attention by refining upon phrases. The char- 
acteristic American prose is the plain prose of Lin- 
coln — a prose so perfect as a medium of expression 
that its value lies wholly in what it communicates. It 
reveals large sympathy and implies the presence of mul- 
titudes of men. It is literature of the purest social type. 

It is noteworthy that the creative impulse in 
America finds other channels than the conventional 
ones. The fine arts are not quite native to us; they 



210 THE CHANGING ORDER 

are with us derivative, the result of conscious and will- 
ful seeking and adaptation. But in certain popular 
and industrial forms our art has been original and 
creative. We originated the public park, for instance, 
and have carried its aesthetic forms to a perfection not 
equalled elsewhere in the world. America's greatest 
artist is a landscape architect. We created also com- 
mercial architecture, and today the American steel- 
frame business temple represents the one new and 
original departure made in the art of architecture 
since the period of the Gothic. After Olmstead our 
most distinctive artist is Sullivan, an architect. It 
is probable the industrial arts will receive their final 
perfection here. A foreign observer, M. Bing of Paris, 
speaking of L'Art Nouveau of which in Europe he is 
the chief exponent, has recently said: "I express the 
conviction that America, more than any other country 
of the world is the soil predestined to the most bril- 
liant bloom of the future art which shall be vigorous 
and prolific." The public park, commercial structures, 
the communal crafts, are modern social types of art. 
They are signs of the revolution wrought in recent 
years in the political and social spheres of endeavor. 
They represent social concepts and imply the presence 
and the co-operation of the people. 

In the history of "Exposition" building in this 
country we have again an apt illustration of the 
growth of a social consciousness in respect to art 
forms. Taking our greater expositions in review, 
it is seen that they represent many phases of 
the evolution of a true art spirit. The Centennial 
Exposition was an exhibition only. Instruction was 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART 211 

its guiding motive. It was a show primarily of the 
world's products. Little was given to beauty for 
itself, and the feeling of unity was altogether lacking. 
The architecture was neither beautiful in itself nor 
did it subserve function. At the World's Fair at Chi- 
cago the exhibition was held somewhat in abeyance, 
the construction having more the intention of a spec- 
tacle. There was still wanting the principle of func- 
tion and the conception of a true unity. The first 
violation of function and the fundamental error, so- 
cially speaking, was the choice of the classic style for 
the architecture. "World's Fair" conveys to the mind 
the idea of a holiday. An excursion to a World's 
Exposition represents a lyric moment thrust in be- 
tween the incidents of business and worldly cares. 
The .time is a play spell — one is in the holiday mood, 
not seeking to be edified alone, or alone to be moved 
by a spectacle of beauty, but to be free and festive 
even. Grecian architecture, perfect for Grecian use, 
is almost meaningless when set down on a level plain 
by a lake side — altogether meaningless when forming 
an arena for a democratic people on holiday. Be- 
tween the rigid and severe simplicity of the classic 
styles and the essential sentiment of a "Fair" there is 
no possible reconciliation. The "White City" made a 
beautiful "show," and as a show it was enjoyed and 
highly commended. But it stopped far short of unity, 
since it was not built with primary reference to the 
people. Instead it was built timidly and negatively, 
in actual distrust of the people. The fair would have 
been as beautiful if there had been no one to behold it. 
It derived nothing of its meaning from the people 



212 THE CHANGING ORDER 

present, and the people saw nothing of themselves 
reflected in the Fair. The third of our great expo- 
sitions, the Pan-American at Buffalo, showed a strik- 
ing advance upon all previous conceptions and ap- 
proximated a perfect social art. Its primary purpose 
was sociological — the purpose, that is, of creating a 
festal scene appropriate to a people on holiday. Based 
on this elemental fact of function, the exposition car- 
ried out the same principle throughout its entire struc- 
tural scheme. To indicate the nature of the particu- 
lar enterprise a Spanish Renaissance style was 
adopted for the architecture — a style which lends it- 
self admirably to festivity and admits a lavish use of 
color and ornamentation. Architecturally the expo- 
sition converged toward the electric tower, which, 
with its suggestion of Niagara, was naturally the 
focus of all paths. The principle of socialization was 
perhaps most apparent in the coloring. For the color- 
ing was not independent, but, so to speak, sociological. 
The color scheme, extending from south to north, 
typified the advance of civilization from barbarism 
to culture, as the milder tints of the central buildings 
pointed to the intellectualization of mankind. There 
were two exceptions to this order. The electric foun- 
tain, having come to the dignity of a "fine art" (that 
is, an independent art), could not be socialized and 
was therefore banished to an island by itself — an 
"art for art's sake." The other exception was 
strangely the government building of the "United 
States." For some reason the government could not 
be socialized, and hence this building stood as an 
excellent illustration of the fact that our present gov- 



THE SOCIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT IN ART 213 

ernmental forms pertain to a conception of the people 
older than the one implied by the exposition itself. 
The sculpture, of which there were some five hundred 
pieces, also formed an integral part of the plan. The 
sculpture, like the color, told the story of civilization. 
There were three series, each conveying a distinct 
historic progression; the story of Man, the story of 
Nature, and the story of Industry. Besides these 
main histories the group at the tower revealed the 
history of the subjugation of Niagara, which is indeed 
the most splendid story of human achievement. Each 
building had its own appropriate symbols in addition 
to those which served the general plan. For the first 
time American sculpture displayed an original genius, 
"finding itself" in social service. In such a manner 
the Fair effected a complete unity of the arts, in the 
way, it will be observed, of the Wagnerian drama. 
And this unity extended so as to include the people, 
since the entire spectacle took meaning from the peo- 
ple, and the people recognized their own history at 
every turn. "Art for art's sake" had at length given 
way to "art for life's sake." 

Here then the whole issue lies. In the interest of 
a Commonweal are we willing to give up specializa- 
tion and cultivate instead the social spirit? Instead 
of trying to be something by ourselves, may we not 
trust, as Emerson advised, the cosmic forces? Is 
there not a Social Intelligence in the world of men as 
active and efficient as the Spirit of the Hive, according 
to which, as Maeterlinck, shows, the bees conduct their 
small but marvellously complicated economies? Will 
criticism face the artistic problem involved in the substitu- 



214 THE CHANGING ORDER 

tion of social for individual standards? In ethics and 
in some other departments of thought the transition 
has already taken place, but criticism remains on the 
individualistic ground. Of course many of the old 
ideas and principles of criticism will suffer change or 
loss. Most of all we shall need to revise the meta- 
physical and aesthetic theories of art. Socially speak- 
ing it is not necessary that art be beautiful; it is not 
necessary that it be of good report — unless it should 
happen that beauty and perfection are social neces- 
sities. We need not deny beauty its place, or good- 
ness its function, but there is a larger fact than either 
abstraction; namely, the actual needs of human life, 
energized and driven by forces larger than itself, 
forces which compel expression characterized at 
times by neither beauty of phrase or Tightness of mo- 
tive, but yet revelatory of spiritual experiences and 
cosmic impulses. "I harbor," said Whitman, in the 
spirit of the new time, "for good or bad, I permit to 
speak at every hazard Nature without check, with 
original energy." In this one direction America can 
move with originality and power: and all other ways 
are closed. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BETTERMENT 

MOVEMENT. 

In the world in which we live there is little evi- 
dence of the conscious possession by any group of 
men and women of the full community sense. Busi- 
ness is competitive and individualistic, and conducted 
to the end of private profit. It is true, a modification 
in the industrial system was made when the legal 
fictions of the firm, the corporation, the trust, and 
other forms of combination, were devised. But in 
truth these corporations socialize their business only 
within the limits of the group, their motive still re- 
maining selfish and egotistic. Now and then, in 
times of want and special crisis, as during the 
recent coal famine, the terrible unrelieved selfishness 
of the business world stands revealed in all its 
ugliness. Every man's hand seems raised against 
every other, or, where combinations have been formed, 
the different groups seize every opportunity to prey 
upon the public at large. Ruskin's plea for the so- 
cialization of business has apparently not found lodg- 
ment in any mind. No one has conceived how an ad- 
vantageous code of business conduct can be based 
upon the social affections. 

The union which has been effected in the labor 
world is in like manner superficial and partial. There 
is, of course, a growing class consciousness, and it 



216 THE CHANGING ORDER 

seems likely that in the next few years the labor world 
will be quite fully solidified. It is important to note that 
already the group contract is superseding individual 
contract, this fact pointing directly to the socializa- 
tion of labor interests within the labor group. 

Combination is the order of the day; but the union 
of the conflicting elements with the public has yet to 
take place. In labor disturbances the public is of all 
the parties concerned the first to be disregarded. In- 
deed, strikes depend commonly for their success upon 
the amount of suffering and inconvenience which can 
be imposed upon the public. 

Politics is based openly on a party system, the 
absurdity of which in matters relating to the general 
welfare has not escaped the notice of political philoso- 
phers. The party system is social to the degree that 
the trust and the labor union are social, and no more. 
The tendency is for politics not to purify, but to de- 
generate into a means for private profit at the hands 
of scheming politicians — to return, that is, to the level 
of business. How little communistic in its motive 
politics is may be seen at times when a public good is 
desired, such as parks and schools, and then every 
effort is made to keep these matters "out of politics." 
In view of the partial nature of party action it has 
been deemed necessary for the people to demand the 
"initiative and referendum," these being devices to 
secure so far as possible the record of community will. 

The truth will probably appear that there is not a 
single democratic institution in America, either in 
politics or business or social life. A very positive in- 
terest, therefore, must attach to what is called the im- 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BETTERMENT MOVEMENT 217 

provement association, which is in fact a new public 
institution taking shape beneath the play of certain 
communal forces. 

The improvement association is different from 
other voluntary associations in that its purpose is po- 
litical in the true sense of the word, and is virtually 
a new institution. It is proposed, indeed, as a sub- 
stitute plan for one which has failed to work. There 
is something wanting in the constitution of govern- 
ment — some inherent defect in it. The failure noted 
is not limited to any one locality nor can it be said to 
be due to the size of the city, for the defect is equally 
obvious in other places and in towns and villages. A 
few days ago I listened to a report of the improvement 
association of Morgan Park, Illinois. Reference was 
made to the apparent inability of the town council to 
get the most necessary things done, or even to correct 
abuses where things were left undone. The streets 
or parks were not properly cared for. The space 
about the railroad station was an unsightly waste. 
There was no gas or other means of lighting in the 
village. The improvement association was formed to 
do precisely what the original town government was 
designed to do, but which it was practically unable to do. 
What we perceive, therefore, is the birth of a new so- 
cial institution, and this institution, it will be observed, 
is the only one so formulated as to embody the com- 
munity spirit. The improvement association is, in 
short, an improved type of the town meeting — so im- 
proved, however, as to constitute virtually a new or- 
ganization. 

The "town" is perhaps the most democratic of 



218 THE CHANGING ORDER 

American political institutions. Above the town the 
principle of representation is employed, and, in conse- 
quence, the county, state, and national forms of gov- 
ernment reveal a constant tendency towards bureau- 
cracy. To show that I am speaking not simply as a 
theorist, I may mention that I have an intimate 
knowledge of town government, having held its of- 
fices in a community where local self-government 
counted for a great deal. I now see that while the 
town is the most democratic of our governmental 
divisions, its one fault is that it is not democratic 
enough. There is no real reason why the members of 
a town meeting should be limited to men of legal vot- 
ing age. Such a limitation may be justified in view 
of the increasing difficulty of delegating authority in 
the higher stages of government, but on the popular 
plane, suffrage should be absolutely universal with- 
out limitations of race, sex or age. 

It is at this point that the first distinctive feature of 
the improvement association is noted. Membership 
in the association goes by right of residence. I am 
not informed whether or not any "woman suffragist" 
is at the bottom of this movement. Perhaps, without 
intending it, the problem of suffrage has been solved 
in a perfectly natural and spontaneous way. And 
now that we see the success which attends the efforts 
of a united community to help itself, it is quite evi- 
dent that the failure of former institutions was due to 
their partial nature. What more natural or more 
necessary than that women should assist in house- 
keeping a city? And not the least good accomplished 
is the care the children learn to take in maintaining 



THE PHILOSOPHY OP THE BETTERMENT MOVEMENT 219 

the good report of the neighborhood. Never before 
have the children been brought in to co-operate in the 
maintenance of order. The inculcation of patriotism 
in the public schools on special days devoted to the 
celebration of Washington and Lincoln anniversaries 
is of little importance if the lesson of citizenship is 
not learned in the community near by. 

A second distinctive feature of the improvement 
association is its principle of voluntary taxation. In 
the long run voluntary service is the best and most 
permanent. There has been some talk of securing 
legislative sanction for these associations, enabling 
them to lay taxes for public improvements. This 
modification of the voluntary plan I should view with 
disfavor. When a law is established, counter cur- 
rents are liable to be engendered in opposition to the 
law, such antagonisms rendering the united action of 
a community impossible. Behind a tax legally laid 
stand the police and the army. The unity they secure 
is an outward and formal unity. Said Walt Whitman : 

"Were you looking to be held together by lawyers? 
Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms? 
Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere." 

It is much better, then, to place the emphasis upon a 
common need and educate the community to a united 
action than to risk disruption by compulsory methods. 
The immediate dependence of the work of the asso- 
ciation upon the support of the neighborhood will 
lead to carefulness and economy and wise expendi- 
ture. Only in this way can the association escape the 
satire of Emerson upon government when he said: 



220 THE CHANGING ORDER 

"Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. 
Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, 
except for these." 

I hope you do not think I am treating this subject 
too seriously. What is an improvement association 
to call out a discussion involving questions of politi- 
cal philosophy! Perhaps you have thought the ob- 
ject of the association is simply to clean streets and 
dispose of garbage, and is of passing interest at best. 
For my own part my interest in the organization is 
aroused because it promises to become a genuine so- 
cial institution. Those who administer the various 
associations are certainly convinced of their per- 
manency. I am a member of a committee of the South 
Park Improvement Association of Chicago, which is 
just now giving out contracts for the planting of trees, 
and plans have been made to bring our whole district 
within a single scheme of landscape gardening. This 
much of the work at least is done in faith, and thus 
far it has the marks of permanency. It is among the 
possibilities that this association will some day build 
a town hall of a new type, not as a place for political 
chicanery, but as a center of social culture. 

Looking at the subject with a broader view we per- 
ceive that there are other causes besides local improve- 
ment waiting upon the development of the com- 
munity spirit. To take a single instance, consider for 
a moment the program of the Municipal Art League 
of Chicago. This league is organized "for the purpose 
of promoting art in the city, and of abating public 
nuisances as preliminary to the stimulation of civic 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BETTERMENT MOVEMENT 221 

pride." Among the public improvements thought 
worthy of consideration by the league are : 

"The suppression of the smoke nuisance as a necessity for mak- 
ing all other improvements appreciable. 

"The improvement of the whole lake front; not only the Lake 
Front Park, but the boulevard system of the North Side and its 
connection with the Lake Front Park by an outer viaduct and 
bridge or subway. 

"The improvement of the designs in use for gas and electric 
light posts, patrol boxes, and waste paper receptacles, and the 
introduction of electrically lighted street name signs. 

"The proper regulation of bill boards. 

"The harmonious grouping of business or private houses 
belonging to different owners, without detriment to the interests 
of each. 

"Conversion of vacant lots into temporary lawns and play- 
grounds, by consent of owners and co-operation of neighbors. 

"Improvement of the designs for signs on business buildings, 
end asking co-operation of the real estate board in adoption of 
standard designs for lots for sale and houses for rent." 

Such are some of the objects of this most praise- 
worthy association. To a reasonable person there is 
nothing unreasonable in any of the suggestions made 
for civic betterment. Yet why is improvement so 
slow? There is no lack of support for other institu- 
tions. A Crerar founds a library, a Rockefeller en- 
dows a university, a Field builds a museum, a Hutch- 
inson supports an art institute. But there is no Na- 
poleon to rebuild Chicago, and, in the nature of things, 
there can not be. Chicago must be reconstructed by 
its citizens working in the spirit of co-operation and 
mutual concession. The other institutions mentioned 
are in a sense external to the life of the city. They 
exist and flourish because they depend for their main- 



222 THE CHANGING ORDER 

tenance upon the accumulation and overplus of 
money and property in egoistic hands. It is to the 
interests of these cultural institutions that the indi- 
vidualistic method of business be retained. More than 
one library has been built out of what from another 
point of view is a public nuisance. For the sake of 
additional libraries we will put up with smoke-be- 
fouled air, we will sacrifice the general comfort and 
health, we will harden our hearts to the cries of the 
oppressed, we will hearken to the alderman who tells 
us if we do not like Chicago to go elsewhere : for pros- 
perity, forsooth, is created out of smoke. The more 
smoke the more libraries; the more libraries the 
greater the smoke nuisance. But municipal art strikes 
at the heart of business itself. It insists that selfish- 
ness and personal greed shall be driven from the com- 
mercial process. It demands that business shall be 
socialized. 

Is a social civilization too much to hope for? Must 
antagonisms always exist among the individuals of a 
community? Are we to be forever driven by economic 
fear? Might not a city of rational beings devise a 
method of living contentedly together? 

It is just possible that in solving our problem of lo- 
cal improvement we are making a contribution to the 
history of civilization. 



INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM—AND AFTER. 

I do not know when and by whom it was first dis- 
cerned that the modern industrial development of the 
world is nearly identical as to its main features with 
the political evolution of an earlier time. It is now 
almost a commonplace to use the words "Industrial 
Feudalism" in describing the modern status of indus- 
try. Mr. Ghent seems to think that in his essay on 
"Benevolent Feudalism" he was the first to apply the 
principle of feudalism* in explaining modern "Cap- 
italism." In truth the conception of a monarchic 
order in industrialism is a familiar one and is implied 
in the popular designation of the great owners and di- 
rectors of properties as "Kings" and "Barons." It is 
now clear that these terms represent very real facts, 
and that the stage now reached in industrial progress 

*In my volume entitled "Chapters in the History of the Arts 
and Crafts Movement," written early in 1900, I made the fol- 
lowing statement: "In the present relationship [between ex- 
ploiters and exploited] all the features of feudalism are found. 
And as the world is only at the beginning of its industrial evo- 
lution it is likely that the process will run parallel at all points 
with the development of government. The old domestic sys- 
tem of industry, which the factory system superseded, was simply 
undifferentiated and unorganized industry. Corresponding to 
the political era of petty warfare was the period of competition. 
Competition has been the agent for the selection of the strong 
and the elimination of the weak. It has created 'Captains of 
Industry' on one side, and an army of workmen reduced to order, 
and compelled to service on the other, etc." 



224 THE CHANGING ORDER 

is distinctly feudal and monarchic. The most success- 
ful and perfectly controlled businesses in recent years 
have been those organized and built up on feudal lines. 
Competition, corresponding to the private wars of the 
middle ages, has forced the issue from without. With- 
in the competitive groups the wage and salary in regu- 
lated scale have furnished the nexus to bind their 
members together in the relation of master and man. 
The war-game is played with dollars and not with 
arms and men. From the combination of groups, 
principalities are being formed, presided over by petty 
Kings. These pay tribute to the few individuals who 
constitute the real government. The monarchic state 
is of course not yet perfected and will not be till the 
"universal trust" is formed whereby competition is 
wholly destroyed and supreme control is placed in the 
hands of one man. This one man will derive his au- 
thority not from the subjects, the workers, but from 
"God." In order that the magnate's action may have 
higher sanction a theory will be formed correspond- 
ing to the "divine right of Kings" — a theory im- 
plied by the devout attitude of many industrial po- 
tentates and which is already formulated by a certain 
"coal-baron" in words that have burned deep into the 
consciousness of the times. 

The monarchic conclusion is inevitable. There will 
be no great change in the industrial system until the 
present centralizing tendency is ended — until all are 
absorbed in the industrial idea, and until all have 
come to industrial consciousness. 

Industrial despotism will be tempered, of course, 
by occasional benevolence — there will be "good" mag- 



INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM— AND AFTER 225 

nates as there were "good" kings. This class will 
seek to solve the social problem from above, through 
various agencies looking toward "industrial better- 
ment." Even now the up-to-date business has a "so- 
cial secretary" whose function is to improve the con- 
ditions of work by providing libraries, lectures 
picnics, flower-beds and the like, and by bringing into 
the corporation that personal element which the cor- 
poration as a "legal fiction" cannot presume to con- 
tain. The rule of the benevolent will often be 
thwarted by rebels and protestors who think they 
want simple justice and not benevolence and flower- 
beds. But, as the system will prove beneficial on the 
whole to the masses of the people during the time of 
its formation the rebellions will be of short life and 
ineffective. 

There will be a growing difficulty also in maintain- 
ing feudal authority, because of the very perfection 
of the machinery of production, the enormous increase 
of products making it increasingly difficult for the own- 
ers to consume that which is produced. The indus- 
trial baron must work out and solve, at the risk of 
losing his position, the problem of employment. One 
unemployed person is a menace to the whole order. One 
unconsumed product is as dangerous to the industrial 
order as was the outlaw in the mountains of Europe to 
the political order. Yet I do not doubt that new ways 
may be devised of spending money and of setting the 
task for labor. 

The advantage of industrial feudalism is two-fold. 
It brings order into the chaos occasioned by compe- 
tition — an order greatly to be desired to satisfy our 



226 THE CHANGING ORDER 

repugnance at social waste. It cannot be denied that 
the system of individualistic production is attended 
by enormous loss of every kind. The law of economy 
requires the co-ordination of effort, such as is at- 
tained in the corporation and trust. And as the world 
is not yet rationalized we must depend for the elimi- 
nation of waste upon the strong hand of an over-lord. 
The second gain in feudalism is the education the 
people receive in industrialism, whereby the way is 
prepared for the assumption of industrial control by 
the people when feudalism shall have fulfilled its func- 
tion. 

But now the question presents itself — After feu- 
dalism, what? The answer seems clear: Some form of 
industrial democracy. 

In political democracy the world's political evolu- 
tion is doubtless culminating. After the dispersion 
of political authority to the individuals of a group the 
political system as such is subject to disintegration. 
The ballot box was once regarded as the "palladium 
of our liberties" — something to suffer for, to fight for, 
and to die for. It is now looked upon by the majority 
of citizens with considerable indifference. The whole 
scheme of political democracy is upheld largely by 
tradition. Government has been handed over to poli- 
ticians who enter into politics because they can get 
something out of it for themselves. And for the pres- 
ent the people — again for traditional and sentimental 
reasons — pay the bills of appropriation : though with 
increasing bad grace. Long ago Emerson noted that 
of all expenditures the people paid the taxes with the 
least willingness. The vital thought of the people is 



INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM— AND AFTER 227 

not to-day in politics. The real problems are not 
governmental but industrial. Is there a single politi- 
cal issue before the American people to-day? Is it at 
all likely that political issues will arise in the future? 
Doubtless the President of the United States will one 
day be a political figure-head precisely in the manner 
of the King of England at the present time. What 
we are witnessing at the present moment is the trans- 
fer of interest from the field of politics to that of in- 
dustry. But let it be observed that the transfer is 
made not from a political democracy to an industrial 
democracy, but from a political democracy to an in- 
dustrial feudalism. This is the real cause of the im- 
mense confusion of our time. Men are independent 
with respect to political government: they are de- 
pendent with respect to industrial control. The bat- 
tle for human freedom has to be fought all over again 
on a new field and with new weapons. The lesson of 
political democracy is, of course, well learned. Never- 
theless the time is not yet come for the establishment 
of business upon democratic lines. In the first place 
the higher ideals of labor have not become universal. 
In the second place there are too many inefficient 
workers. A revolution at the present time to effect 
the destruction of industrial feudalism in the manner 
of the French Revolution, which brought about the 
ruin of political feudalism, would result in chaos. 
Industrial consciousness is too imperfectly developed 
for all men to assume industrial self-control. But 
when the feudal order is perfected and when the su- 
perior magnate has held control long enough for the 
people to realize that loyalty to him is in truth loy- 



228 THE CHANGING ORDER 

alty to themselves — that he is nothing by himself, 
but only as he represents the will of the whole people, 
then the dispersion of the magnate's authority will be 
effected gradually — it may be by some revolution. 

A sign of the times is that the transfer of inter- 
ests to industrial feudalism is made by means of "Re- 
publican" politics. The rise of the Republican Party 
to power coincides with the modern evolution of busi- 
ness. This is more than accidental. The Republican 
Party stands for centralization. It is Hamiltonian in 
its policy — Hamilton being of all political leaders the 
most monarchic in attitude. Meanwhile the policies 
of Jefferson are obscured. The Republican Party 
stands also for property, and property owners do well 
to contribute to the Republican campaign fund. 
Meanwhile the people must wait for their recognition 
at the hands of the government until materials are 
fully organized and the rush for property has sub- 
sided. It is doubtful if labor will gain anything by 
affiliating with the Democratic Party or by forming 
an independent Labor Party, for the reason that in- 
dustrial democracy can never be established on the 
basis of a political system. Business is strategic and 
centralizes in regions which ignore the artificial 
boundaries of state and county. The strength of labor 
lies in its unions and federations — which are federa- 
tions of men and not governments of laws. The true 
policy of labor is to maintain and perfect the interior 
organization of the union, waiting the while for the 
culmination of the present tendency. History can 
but repeat itself. The next step after industrial feud- 
alism is industrial democracy. This means that in- 



INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM— AND AFTER 229 

dustries will be conducted by and for the people ; and 
this means, of course, that production will be carried 
on, not for the sake of production or for that power 
which wealth secures, but for the sake of the people. 

Already, in isolated places, the transition from feu- 
dalism to democracy has begun. I do not refer to the 
building of "model" workshops or villages or to any 
other similar scheme of benefaction, whereby the 
feudal lords seek to conceal the rigor of their rule. I 
refer to the beginnings of industrial control in certain 
factories and stores where proprietorship is nominal, 
and where interior control is effected by the ballot. I 
refer also to the "co-operative movement" which is 
destined to increase and include both production and 
consumption. I refer also to the workshops building 
here and there under the influence of the teaching and 
example of Ruskin and Morris. Voluntary individual 
co-operation is, I believe, the ultimate form of indus- 
trial democracy. 

Assuming that evolution at this stage of life is ra- 
tionally inclined, what factors, now, can be depended 
upon to continue and perfect the new tendency? 
Knowledge, for one thing, or what is called science. 
By science the monarchic conception of the universe 
is forever disproved. There is no Absolute Deity 
which rules the universe as with a sceptre. The uni- 
verse is a republic and not a kingdom. The more we 
know of the nature of things the more certain does it 
appear that intelligence and will reside in the atom 
and groups of atoms. The law of form is function and 
service. The human body is a veritable republic, its 
very life being dependent upon the co-operation of 



230 THE CHANGING ORDER 

the individual cells composing it. Probably the purest 
type found in Nature of an industrial community is 
the bee-hive. Apiarists have miscalled the maternal 
bee the queen. But the bees at work are controlled 
not by the queen but by something which Maeterlinck 
in his wonderful book on The Bee calls "The Spirit of 
the Hive." It may seem inappropriate to make this 
reference to knowledge, but the fact remains that 
any given change will occur in the social order only as 
the members of that society shape an ideal in which 
all may share, and to which all will conform. The 
sanction of a feudal order was found in mediaeval the- 
ology. The sanction of the new industrialism will be 
found in science. A democracy more than any other 
social form is dependent upon education. 

A second factor is the love of freedom. This, prob- 
ably, is the ultimate human impulse. Governors, mas- 
ters, rulers of every sort, who do not plan their gov- 
ernance with reference to the love of liberty in all 
hearts, prove their incapacity to exercise authority at 
all. Said Whitman to the foiled European Revolu- 
tionaire : 

"Courage yet, my brother or my sister! 

What we believe in waits latent forever through all the con- 
tinents, 

Invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, 
is positive and composed, knows no discouragement, 

Waiting patiently, waiting its time. 

When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor 
the second or third to go, 

It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last." 

How, then, does the case for liberty stand now? 
What is lacking in the free scope of free men? 



INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM— AND AFTER 231 

Clearly, free action is wanted on just one point. We 
are free in matters of religion. There are no recent 
instances of persecution, except in remote places. We 
are equally free in matters of political practice. There 
are, perhaps, more exceptions to political freedom 
than religious freedom, but still political freedom is 
practically assured. But no one today enjoys indus- 
trial freedom. No one is self-directive in the field of 
work. Every workman must find an employer. The 
functions of hand and head are performed by differ- 
ent individuals. So long as this condition exists there 
will be warfare between the executive and servile 
agents. Industrial freedom means the privilege of 
self-control in respect to one's work. It involves the 
making of every workman his own employer. This is 
not an easy relation to sustain to oneself, it is admit- 
ted. But it is not more difficult than serving as priest 
and king over oneself. Industrial freedom, like reli- 
gious and political freedom, depends for its effective- 
ness upon character and capacity in the individual. 
Religious feudalism and political feudalism were so 
ordered as to afford the best possible training in self- 
control in their respective fields. Industrial feudalism 
will doubtless furnish a discipline equally effective. 
When men are ready for the assumption of authority, 
such authority will be readily assumed. The shifting 
of control will be gradual — so gradual that there will 
be no break in the unity of industrial life. The work 
of the world will go on very much as it does now. No 
one will stop working, but work will be done from a 
new motive : not under compulsion but voluntarily. 
This is the very essence of industrial freedom. When 



232 THE CHANGING ORDER 

Great Britain abrogated the political government of 
Massachusetts with the intention of forcing submis- 
sion by this means, the province subsisted for a year 
without governors of any kind — without governors but not 
without government. In one of the workshops of the new 
industrialism, surprise was expressed by a visitor that 
there was not special distinction in the product. The 
answer of the workman to the query was that the ob- 
ject of the workshop was not to make an unusual kind 
of chair but to make the usual chair with a new kind 
of workman. The chair was after a traditional pat- 
tern ; the workman was the product of a revolution. 

Without elaborating these suggestions further, I 
may state succinctly the theses I have had in mind to 
prove. 

1. An industrial order is now being established 
which corresponds in all essential respects with what 
is known in political history as feudalism. 

2. The political order, so far as it is shaped by the 
same individuals who control industry, partakes also 
of the nature of feudalism; hence the recrudescence 
in the United States of the principles of Hamilton and 
the dominance of the Republican Party. 

3. When the feudalistic tendency culminates into 
the establishment of a centralized control of all indus- 
tries, then the conscious and deliberate appropriation 
of that power by the people will begin, till work be- 
comes free and the worker self-directive. 

4. Biology and psychology testify to the ultimate 
triumph of the principle of self-activity. In other 
words, all the forces of evolution are on the side of the 
people. 



THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL. 

A short time ago I received a letter from a graduate 
student in a certain university in which he stated that, on 
account of the lack of a sufficient sum of money to "carry 
him through," he was forced to support himself. "This 
I do," the letter reads, "by manufacturing a few hundred 
cigars a week. If you use cigars, I should esteem your 
patronage a great favor. I make the cigars myself, and 
manufacture only high grade goods." The condition de- 
picted here is one with which I was familiar, yet never 
before was one aspect of our education brought so forcibly 
and clearly to my attention. The letter betokens the com- 
plete divorcement that has grown up between education 
on the one hand, and industrialism on the other hand. 
Education, it seems, is a leisuristic pursuit which entails 
the sacrifice of one's trade or profession. Furthermore, 
one's trade or profession is not regarded as having any 
educational value and is at best a means of gaining a live- 
lihood. Taking this young man's case as typical, how 
should such a problem be solved? Should he seek to 
abandon his trade altogether and win at all hazards a 
special and supposedly higher culture; or should he go 
back to the workshop and yield all hopes of becoming an 
educated man; or should he do what he is now doing; 
devote part of his time to his work (which is one thing) 
and a part of his time to education (which is another 
thing) ? 

Let us suppose that he despises his work as ignoble 



234 THE CHANGING ORDER 

and chooses to become a man of culture — then, he rejects 
that which is at least real, and enters upon a path that 
tends toward unreality, till perchance he loses himself 
in abstraction and ceases, therefore, however reined he 
may become, to be a vital factor in the world's work. 
But is the other alternative any better? He gains, let us 
say, a livelihood by his work ; he surrounds himself with 
the bodily comforts and indulges occasionally in luxuries ; 
he becomes perhaps a foreman in the shop or rises to the 
position of proprietor, promoter and trust-magnate. But 
if, in this process, he is uneducated, his work is still unre- 
deemed and is virtually unprofitable, however vast his 
worldly possessions. Recently a man who had chosen the 
way of business and in the pride of his success had assert- 
ed that a college education was a detriment to a man of af- 
fairs, passed his vacation in Europe. It was observed that 
when away from his business he was reduced for pleas- 
urable exercise to gambling at Monte Carlo. We were a 
little shocked at this, not that we regard gambling as a 
sin, but that Monte Carlo seemed so trivial in view of the 
stimulus which Europe offers to a man of true culture and 
insight. But is the third solution a way out of the dif- 
ficulty? Should our young man study half of the time 
and work at his trade the rest of the day? This solution 
is reached, of course, by way of a compromise — a 
compromise of the same nature as that presented in the 
labor world by the eight-hour day. It consists in reducing 
what is offensive and undesirable to its lowest terms, in 
order that when necessity is satisfied, the worker may be 
free for a season to do that which to him is pleasurable. 
I cannot imagine a torture more grievous than that. In- 
deed, the orthodox hell, as described by Milton in Para- 



THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL. 23'5 

dise Lost, consisted in just this alternate freezing and 
burning. The case of this young man, or of any young 
man, seems to me at this time to be hopeless. There is 
simply no chance in the world today for a man to be in- 
tegral, to live an entire life; he must be divided and di- 
vided according to the divisions which obtain throughout 
the whole range of modern life. 

I see only one remedy for the class system of modern 
society — that is, to reconstruct the institutions that em- 
body the social spirit ; to create a school which is not so far 
removed from the workshop as to obliterate real processes 
and objects — to create a workshop which shall be so fully 
educative in itself that it will be a virtual school. I can 
conceive that even a cigar factory might be so conducted 
as to be instructive. If one really understood the work he 
was doing, the part he was playing in the world's vast 
intricate scheme of industry; or if one really knew in all 
its relations the object he was handling — in this case, let 
us say, the history of the tobacco plant, such a workman 
would not pass as a wholly uneducated man. In contact 
with his fellow workmen, he might develop to the full the 
life of comradeship : that human sympathy without which 
education of any sort is empty and unprofitable. My illus- 
tration is perhaps unfortunate. To King James, who ut- 
tered a counterblast against tobacco, or to Emerson, who 
thought a cigar was a crowbar thrust in among the deli- 
cate tendrils of the brain, the illustration would be un- 
savory. But it was of a plant of less importance than the 
tobacco plant that Tennyson said : 

"Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies, 
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand! 



236 THE CHANGING ORDER 

Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 

But I do not wish to anticipate my conclusion. I do 
contemplate the creation, at no far distant time, of a com- 
bined workshop and school : but meanwhile there are cer- 
tain considerations which must be understood in order that 
our evolution may be rational and the end desired be pre- 
pared for. 

The dominant tendency in the world today is the indus- 
trial. Broadly speaking, the industrial issues are the 
vital ones. The most virile and energetic minds of the 
modern world are engaged in solving the problems that 
attach to material things. The men who, at other times 
in the world's history, erected altars, built cathedrals, led 
armies, conducted diplomacy, formulated systems of phil- 
osophy, and mastered the technique of the arts, are today 
engaged in industry. That was a sublime story of the 
history of mankind told at the Buffalo Exposition by the 
series of buildings and sculpture groups which centered 
in the Electric Tower. There at the focus of all paths 
stood resplendent the shining tower. By ways of savagery, 
and step by step through various forms of culture, the race 
reached a point where it could engage successfully in 
struggle with the more subtle forces of its environment. 
There, I say, at the center of all historic radii rose up 
triumphant the electric tower — a symbol of what ? symbol 
of man's greatness in respect of religion, or art, or poli- 
tics, or laws ? Not of these, but of his genius in industry. 
It is not quite correct to say that the light which streamed 
from the tower was a "symbol" of man's genius, for it 
was rather the evidence of it. It was a light objective 



THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL 237 

and material, a light made of the energy transmitted 
from Niagara. Here was the secret. Niagara had waited 
a million years for its conqueror, its subjection to the ser- 
vice of man, and this conquest was regarded by the build- 
ers of the Fair as the supreme achievement of the race 
thus far. For the first time, we recognized and published 
and celebrated the fact that an electric tower, thus de- 
vised and illumined, was worthy to stand in the place of 
honor where hitherto cathedrals and armies and thrones 
and constitutions and art had stood. That Exposition 
was the apotheosis of labor ; it was the exaltation of ma- 
terials. And as a further evidence of our industrial civili- 
zation it was noticed that he who was then our political 
leader, in his last great address, spoke not of political, 
but of industrial problems. President Roosevelt's recent 
message to Congress dealt almost entirely with industrial 
questions. The part our President played in settling the 
coal strike was a prophesy of what the function of our 
highest officer is destined to become. What do these signs 
indicate if not that the time has come to estimate the 
genius of an individual or of a people by capacity to con- 
trol materials ? When Sir William Hamilton asserted that 
Aristotle had a genius as great as Homer's, he seized upon 
the primary fact that genius may be exercised in many 
directions. Genius is not greater or smaller by virtue of 
the materials it works upon; genius is power, the power 
of an organizing, effective mind. 

Accepting then the statement that the dominant ten- 
dency in the world today is the industrial, we are ready 
to carry our inquiry farther back and to ask why the place 
of primacy should be given to the industrial hero. The 
answer is not far to seek. The result appears to be due 



238 THE CHANGING ORDER 

to the working of that social force we call democracy. 
The most democratic peoples today are those most suc- 
cessful in the field of industry — and the connection is 
more than accidental. America has assumed the leader- 
ship among industrial nations, much to the perplexity 
and alarm of competing factories. The secret of this 
leadership seems to be little understood. In vain do for- 
eign manufacturers provide new machinery for their 
workshops and introduce new methods into their business. 
It is soon discovered that success is not a matter of ma- 
chinery and method ; it lies farther back in the social sys- 
tem and environment. Our American success in indus- 
trial enterprises is explained by the fact that immense 
stores of energy, latent and unemployed, are released for 
service through the opening of opportunity occasioned by 
democracy. A democratic people is not a religious people, 
not an artistic people, not a political people, but a working 
people. We are constituted of men who do things. We 
sweep all transcendental visions and fictions aside and start 
from the ground of the concrete fact. And we are dis- 
covering more and more that successful doing of things 
is a form of noble exercise. It i? necessary to emphasize 
this fact, since if we are to enter rationally into a given 
line of evolution we must understand what is important 
and what is meaningless. The significance of evolution 
pertains far more to the future than to the past or present. 
If it is clear that the industrial tendency is the dominant 
one, and if back of that there is to continue the perpetual 
pressure of democratic forces, then it is the part of wis- 
dom to create institutions that relate to industrial democ- 
racy and withdraw our support from old and outworn 
ideals. Let the arts and the religions and the political 



THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL 239 

systems that took their rise from, and furnished the sus- 
tenance for the feudal aristocracies of Europe — let them 
wither, I say, and pass from men's memories and minds ! 
In naming democracy as the force that is shaping the 
modern world, and as the fact which must condition all 
our thinking, I imply, of course, the presence still among 
us of the opposite force and fact variously known as mon- 
archy, feudalism, and aristocracy. And it appears that 
while the modern spirit is democratic, the forms and in- 
stitutions still in evidence are derived largely from mon- 
archy. Many of our religions, in particular the Salva- 
tion Army, are clearly monarchic in character; for they 
strive to establish on earth "the kingdom of God." 
Thrones, judgment-seats, commands, punishments — these 
linger in theology, while in science and in actual affairs 
the universe is regarded as a republic. Especially in 
prayer-books and hymn-books do the feudal ideals linger. 
Even our National Hymn closes with a reference to "God 
our King." The art we try to keep alive in a poor, thin 
fashion was originally provided for the noble and leisure 
classes of Europe, and is still an incident of wealth and 
luxury. What can be more undemocratic than the prin- 
ciple of "art for art's sake," according to which most of 
our art is produced, and by the acceptance of which those 
gifted with special aesthetic taste defend their exclusive- 
ness? Our public schools have been democratized to 
some extent, yet even here there is a considerable trace 
of foreign ideals. The emphasis still placed on culture 
and learning as such, and upon formal thinking, upon in- 
tellectual discipline, upon reading and writing, upon ex- 
aminations and prizes, upon authority and discipline, 
upon athletics — these emphases are signs of the belated 



240 THE CHANGING ORDER 

militarism in the American school. Strangely enough, too, 
our present industrial system, though modern in spirit, is 
formed on the lines of the military, and we speak of 
"Captains of Industry" and not infrequently refer to the 
great trust-magnates as "kings" — "sugar kings," "to- 
bacco kings," "oil kings," etc. The "trust" is a federation 
of principalities, and it has been prophesied that if the 
present tendency continues, in twenty years an Emperor 
will be ruling at Washington. The latest suggestion is 
that we are forming in this country a "benevolent feudal- 
ism." I do not know of a single perfected democratic 
institution, though there are abundant tokens of change 
and transition. 

The purpose of my remarks thus far has been to call 
your attention to the conditions I have just noted. We 
live in a new age ; we are impelled by new thoughts ; yet 
we are trying to put up with old forms. Our interior life 
is one thing. Our exterior life is another thing. Is it not 
possible to create new institutions — institutions that will 
not be masks and lies, but represent what we really think 
and are or hope to be ? One such institution I propose — the 
institution of the workshop : a workshop of a new type, 
such as may be properly the unit of organization in the 
industrial commonwealth we are forming. 

The workshop I have in mind will embody to the full 
the high ideals of labor, conceived by such writers as Rus- 
kin, and current in the world for nearly a century. It 
will be a genuine manufactory where materials shall be 
shaped into the things we use. It will be a "studio," 
where work shall be creative and not devoid of a sense 
of beauty. It will be a school where the doing of things 
shall be educative, since work will there be conducted to 



THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL 241 

the ends of expression, as art is at its best and as life 
is at its freest. In a sense, it will be a state, since it will 
be a community of self-governing individuals. In a sense, 
too, it will be a church, since it will be established upon 
the basis of co-operation and comradeship. Such a work- 
shop is a dream, you say, impossible of realization. But 
let us examine the factors more in detail. I said the work- 
shop would embody certain high ideals of labor. For a 
century there, has been proclaimed a gospel of labor, which 
came into being apparently in opposition to the leisur- 
istic ideal of aristocracy. Carlyle was one of the ablest and 
most outspoken advocates of the new doctrine. There is 
splendid passion glowing in Carlyle's words concerning 
the "toilworn craftsman that conquers the earth and makes 
her man's" There is a passage in his writings which I 
can never read without a quickening of the heart : "Ven- 
erable to me is the hard hand, crooked, coarse, wherein, 
notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, 
as of the scepter of this planet. Venerable, too, is the rug- 
ged face, all weather tanned, besoiled, with its rude intel- 
ligence ; it is the face of a man living manlike. Oh ! but 
the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we 
must pity as well as love thee, hardly entreated brother! 
For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight 
limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our conscript, 
on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so 
marred. For in thee lay a God-created form, but it was 
not to be unfolded ; encrusted must it stand, with the thick 
adhesions and defacements of Labour ; and thy body, like 
thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on ; 
thou art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest 
for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread." From 



242 THE CHANGING ORDER 

the terms employed and the feeling displayed, it is evident 
that Carlyle had but just made the discovery of this crafts- 
man. But through how many cruel cerements he was 
obliged to penetrate! We have seen this workman — he 
still walks our streets. Yet in the same age another 
craftsman has appeared — a craftsman of which William 
Morris is the type — erect and forceful, who wins his way 
by sheer strength of personality, who actually realizes 
the ideal of the nobility of labor that Carlyle pronounced 
to be possible. Now Carlyle belonged to the first half of 
the nineteenth century and Morris to the second half. 
Carlyle simply outlined the doctrine of labor as from a 
pulpit. But Morris exercised his energy within an actual 
workshop. Will you dare to say that in the next half 
century the possibilities of labor may not be realized by 
multitudes of men and women ? Is it not our function to 
make this realization simple and rational ? 

Just how the institutional workshop will arise, and in 
what guise it will appear, I can not say. But I conceive 
that in this workshop real work will be conducted, and 
that we shall make in it all those things we need for as- 
tual use. This institution will be at least self-supporting. 
It seems to me a defect of our institutions that they are 
really parasitic and exist by virtue of the labor of others, 
as represented in taxes as to the state, in contributions as 
to the church, in patronage as to the arts, in endowments 
as to the school. We do not want to add another charity to 
this series. This much is clear: the workshop will be a 
commercial enterprise. This surely will not be difficult, 
considering the long training the world has had in pure 
acquisition. 

With successful commercialism as the basic fact, we 



THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL 243 

may then add to that the element of art. I do not mean 
that the fine arts will be given place in the workshop. That 
is not necessary. Art is simply free creation. Beauty is 
not something added to an object, it is a quality of work. 
It comes into evidence whenever a man takes pleasure in 
his work, whenever his hands are permitted to do what 
his own desires determine and his own will directs. The 
difference between art and not-art is that the one is work 
accomplished in freedom and the other is work done under 
conditions of slavery. It seems we are free today in every 
respect but one — we may go where we will, we may think 
and speak what we will, we may worship when we will 
and vote for whom we will ; but very few men today can 
work as they will. The workman must discover an em- 
ployer, the lawyer must find his client, the doctor must 
wait for his patient, the preacher must be called to his 
pulpit, the teacher must be invited to his chair. There is 
almost no free work in the world today, and probably 
cannot be under our present organization. Recently I 
have learned that workmen are not desired in factories 
after the age of forty-five. If this be true — if a man is 
shut out from the worlds work at forty-five, then is our 
industrial civilization dangerous and altogether question- 
able. So long as this condition lasts art is impossible. 
Art will enter into the workshop only when the worker is 
in some degree at least a free agent. As I look back upon 
the recent past, I discover but one genuinely free work- 
man — this same William Morris, and in all the industrial 
world I discover only one movement that looks towards 
the real redemption of labor — the arts and crafts move- 
ment which Morris again was instrumental in initiating. 
If, then, we desire art in our workshop we must add to the 



244 THE CHANGING ORDER 

system of exchange some principle of free workmanship. 
The workshop as school is already provided for when 
work is made creative. In the truest education there is 
always a double activity — the primary mental activity in- 
volved in plan or design; the secondary motor activity 
concerned in the execution of the plan or design. The 
failure of the present school is that it exercises the mind, 
but stops at the point where thought tends to pass out 
into action. This error is by no means corrected when the 
school adds to its equipment a gymnasium, or encourages 
the playing of foot-ball or base-ball. The failure of the 
present workshop, in its turn, is that it employs the motor 
energies, but does not admit of original design. And this 
error is not counteracted when some individual is secured 
to do the thinking and designing for the whole com- 
munity of workers. In the school we get unreal thinking ; 
from the workshop we get unintelligent work. In both 
cases the education is partial, and so far as I can see, the 
education of the school is as imperfect as that of the fac- 
tory. If the one tends to increase stupidity and ignorance, 
the other tends to develop priggishness and pride. I have 
been reading with much amusement the account of two 
educated men in Ernest Crosby's "Plain Talk in Psalm 
and Parable :" 

"Here are two educated men. 

The one has a smattering of Latin and Greek; 

The other knows the speech and habits of horses and cattle, 
and gives them their food in due season. 

The one is acquainted with the roots of nouns and verbs; 

The other can tell you how to plant and dig potatoes and car- 
rots and turnips. 

The one drums by the hour on the piano, making it a terror 
to the neighborhood; 



THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL 245 

The other is an expert at the reaper and binder, which fills 

the world with good cheer. 
The one knows or has forgotten the higher trigonometry and 

the differential calculus; 
The other can calculate the bushels of rye standing in his 

field and the number of barrels to buy for the apples 

on the trees in his orchard. 
The one understands the chemical affinities of various poisonous 

acids and alkalies; 
The other can make a savoury soup or a delectable pudding. 
The one sketches a landscape indifferently; 
The other can shingle his roof and build a shed for himself in 

workmanlike manner. 
The one has heard of Plato and Aristotle and Kant and 

Comte, but knows precious little about them; 
The other has never been troubled by such knowledge, but he 

will learn the first and last word of philosophy, "to 

love," far quicker, I warrant you, than his collage-bred 

neighbor. 
For still is it true that God has hidden these things from the 

wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes. 
Such are the two educations: 
Which is the higher and which the lower?" 

As Mr. Crosby states the case, his question can receive 
but one answer. The educated man is the workman, and 
he is educated precisely because he has combined the two 
factors of mental and motor activity. The farm is still a 
place where a workman may think out his task, but I be- 
lieve we can do better in the improved workshop. I do 
not care whether you introduce manual training into the 
school, or whether you carry freedom to the factory. 
The modification of either institution in the direction I 
have indicated will result in the new workshop which 
educative industrialism demands. It is likely, however, 
that the school will be the first to suffer change. It will 



246 THE CHANGING ORDER 

be easier to persuade the schools to engage in real pro- 
cesses than to train workmen to think about the work. 
The doom of the old school was pronounced when the first 
work-bench was let into the basement or garret or unused 
class-room. The work-bench is destined to crowd out the 
desks and text-books and the other signs of passive learn- 
ing. Now we have a fair chance of getting what Kropot- 
kin well calls "integral education." It is probable that 
the schools will be the first of our institutions to be demo- 
cratized. And it may be that, by way of the school, the 
industrial system will itself be transformed. 

I have suggested also that the workshop might be the 
unit of the community organization. When it becomes 
the function of states to develop and conserve industries — ■ 
when we magnify industrial instead of legal relationships, 
the workmen who may unite to form a guild will have an 
importance not now accorded them. Membership in a guild 
would constitute citizenship with its duties and responsi- 
bilities. The workshop would be a place for the develop- 
ment of community consciousness. I perceive already in 
the "labor unions" the vague working of such a conscious- 
ness. A "Labor Party," however, competing with politi- 
cal parties for political ends and legal rights, would seem 
to be a very illogical outcome of such consciousness. An 
industrial structure can never be laid upon a political or 
legal foundation, industrial democracy being a co-part- 
nership of men and not a government of laws. A State 
boundary line, for instance, is a legal fiction, and its truth 
is challenged by every railroad line that crosses it. I do 
not pretend to know what institutional forms will arise 
upon the ground of the workshop, but I can see that they 
must be different from those we now possess. 



THE WORKSHOP AND SCHOOL 247 

The religious aspect of the workshop is summed up in 
the word brotherhood, or comradeship. Take away from 
labor its compulsion, let one be free to choose his asso- 
ciates in work as freely as he is now able to join a church 
or club, and an opportunity for comradeship will be given 
that does not now exist in the world of labor. The nexus 
in nearly all industrial enterprises is the wage, and men 
are forced to work together whether that association be 
pleasing or not. With a freer system of labor, it might be 
possible to restore to the workshop that courtesy and sym- 
pathy, once so common, but now so rarely met with. The 
working classes are not merely "unchurched;" they are, 
from their conditions of work, quite generally irreligious, 
But I am sure that it was for the members of the recon- 
structed workshop that Whitman wrote his poems of com- 
radeship, the group called "Calamus," representing the 
new ideas of chivalry, and especially the poems entitled, 
"I Hear It was Charged against Me," and "I Dream'd 
in a Dream": 

"I hear it was charged against me that I sought to destroy 

institutions, 
But really I am neither for nor against institutions, 
What indeed have I in common with them? or what with 

the destruction of them? 
Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of 

these States inland and seaboard, 
And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or large 

that dents the water, 
Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument, 
The institution of the dear love of comrades." 

A more practical or more beautiful religion than this 
I do not know. 
This, then, is my conception of an ideal workshop or 



248 THE CHANGING ORDER 

school — a conception made of the specialized ideas of 
factory, studio, school, state and church- — a synthesis 
that is forced upon the mind from the desire to coun- 
teract the terrible devisive and disintegrating forces 
in modern life. I feel certain that we are approaching 
a period of synthesis and correlation. The competitive 
system is nearing its fall. Specialization has been car- 
ried to an extreme and in the near future we must co- 
ordinate specialties. We are beginning to think with 
Ruskin that men may be of more value than products. 
If you think that what I have presented be unpracti- 
cal, let it be noted that I have introduced no factors that 
do not already exist, and that I have but read the perfect 
logic of the situation. In some way, we shall arrive 
at this conclusion — must so arrive from the very pres- 
sure of social forces. 

Whitman was once asked to write a poem for the 
opening of an industrial exposition in New York city. 
The theme was to him an inspiring one, since beyond all 
other seers, he cherished the vision of an idustrial com- 
monwealth. From the Song of the Exposition he 
wrote for that occasion, I take these lines : 

"Mightier than Egypt's tombs, 
Fairer than Grecia's, Roma's temples, 
Prouder than Milan's statued, spired cathedral, 
More picturesque than Rhenish castle-keeps, 
We plan even now to raise, beyond them all, 
Thy great cathedral, sacred industry, no tomb, 
A keep for life, for practical invention." 



A SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ART. 

I. 

"The ideal university," James Russell Lowell once 
said, "is a place where nothing useful is taught." It 
is clear that Lowell approved a purely intellectual and 
aesthetic education. He meant that the school should 
be controlled as little as possible by practical needs, 
should lie outside of employments or other conditions, 
and be devoted to increasing capacity of enjoying 
books and art and enriching passively the spiritual 
life. The transcendental conception of education is 
lordly, ideal and attractive, and in a state of society 
that permits the maintenance of a leisure class it is 
an ideal of ready acceptance. As a matter of fact it 
was the ideal cherished by the New England colleges 
throughout their early history, whose model instructor 
was at once a scholar and a gentleman, and as a con- 
sequence of their influence, education in America has 
been associated largely with the leisuristic and pe- 
cuniary classes. While nominally open to all, our 
schools have always been schools of privilege. The 
primary three Rs are fundamentals only of an intel- 
lectual culture. The New England colleges built up 
a genuine aristocracy, which was not less inclusive in 
that it was intellectual, or, as the saying is, "an aris- 
tocracy of brains," which, in contradistinction to the 
European feudalism of family, was asserted proudly 



250 THE CHANGING ORDER 

to be the "only aristocracy worthy the name." Mean- 
while the American people, as to their masses, were 
developing their vast industrial system, and the 
leisuristic tendency was crossed and recrossed by 
the industrial stream. In the effort latterly to 
reconstruct an education more in harmony with the 
social democracy, the first intention was to extend the 
privilege of education to all members of the social 
whole. During this period of reconstruction, through 
liberal public and private endowments, a widely ex- 
tended and nearly inclusive system of popular educa- 
tion has been established. But for the most part the 
education thus extended was the same education of 
privilege that had its rise in the leisure class. Hence, 
the emphasis placed upon the mere symbols of learn- 
ing, reading and writing. The tendency is still to cre- 
ate a culture representative of caste. Notwithstand- 
ing the modifications in the scope of the school forced 
by the industrial democracy, such as are signified by 
technical, commercial, and manual training depart- 
ments in the midst of cultural studies, it must be ac- 
knowledged that the leisure-class theory of education 
is still in the ascendent. The benefits of even the 
public schools, supported though they are by general 
taxation, accrue to an intellectual aristocracy. The 
divorce between the hand and the brain, which is de- 
structive of any genuine integral education, continues 
in full force. The people, as to their industrial ac- 
tivities, remain unserved and even unrecognized. 
Except in certain schools for Indians and negroes it 
is not possible today to receive instruction in the fun- 
damentals of industrial education. What is needed at 



A SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ART 251 

this juncture is not a further extension of an education 
of privilege, but the complete abrogation of privilege 
and the establishment of schools upon entirely new 
grounds. Mr. Albert Shaw, in a paper descriptive of 
Hampton Institute, recently made the statement that 
"the finest, soundest, and most effective educational 
methods in use in the United States are to be found in 
certain schools for negroes and Indians, and in others 
for young criminals in reformatory prisons." Can it 
be that Hampton Institute, founded for the instruc- 
tion of negroes in the fundamental employments, is 
the model institute for America! Such may prove to 
be the case. The time has come for schools whose aim 
shall be to serve the needs of modern industrial de- 
mocracy, that shall build upon that fine instinct for 
workmanship that is the very life of industry when not 
permeated by caste, — schools that shall declare: "The 
ideal university is a place where nothing useless is 
taught." It belongs to an aristocracy to support the 
useless — useless garments, ceremonies, athletics, learn- 
ing and whatnot — as the sign of an ability to indulge 
itself in reputable expenditure. A democracy justifies 
its existence on the ground of its usefulness, its ability 
to create and do, and its faculty to enjoy creating and 
doing. The new school will start with the construc- 
tive energies; it will unite the senses and the soul; it 
will employ the hand equally with the brain; it will 
exalt the active over the passive life; it will love 
knowledge for its service; it will make a real and not 
a false use of books ; it will test production not alone 
by its pecuniary results but by human values — whether 
it yields pleasure or pain. The problem of democratic 



252 THE CHANGING ORDER 

education is not to give the people a culture alien to 
their lives, but to transform that which they have into 
something more rational and harmonious. The old 
humanities were secured by refining and secluding; 
the new humanities will be discovered among the peo- 
ple The chief agency of popular education will be the 
very labor through which life is sustained. Industry 
employs the mind that its work may be intelligent; it 
provides for moral training in that its work must be 
sincere. 

The folly of the extension of an exclusive culture is 
made very evident in the case of the American negro. 
When released from slavery he became, through the 
zeal of Northern abolitionists, a victim of an intel- 
lectual civilization. He was provided with schools 
of the Northern type, instructed in the caste distinc- 
tions of New England, and directed henceforth to live 
by his wits. The assumption of the superiority of 
separate mental training is proven by the history of 
the negro to be untrue. It is now conceded that the 
philanthropic policy of the North was mistaken. It 
was not access to libraries or knowledge of the classics 
that the negro needed; and not necessarily the ability 
to read the printed ballot the North placed in his 
hands. His field is that of the elementary employ- 
ments : here alone is his energy initial and educative. 
Hampton Institute demonstrated the way of entrance 
into the promised land. When independent in ele- 
mentary labor, the negro may learn an independence 
of wider application. 

If called upon to write a prospectus of a school 
fitted for industrial democracy I would not have in 



A SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ART 253 

mind a trades-school that should be simply an ad- 
junct to the present industrial system, though I am 
willing to acknowledge the necessity of such a school 
and the importance of the present system. Calcula- 
tion should be made of tendencies and growth. The 
domestic system of production gave way to the factory 
system with its machinery, and this in its turn seems 
destined to yield to a higher industrialism wherein the 
individual will have freer scope than ever before to 
control his hand and brain, and will need therefore a 
more skillful hand and a more cunning brain. Under 
present conditions of specialization the master is sepa- 
rated from the man, the designer from his tool. These 
conditions would require that the tool be sharpened 
for the designer, that the man be disciplined for the 
master. However advantageous this relationship 
may be economically it has little value educationally. 
It destroys the totality of work and the integrity of 
life. It sinks the individual in the product. It per- 
mits no one in the whole series of specialized activi- 
ties to be, in the full sense of the term, a creator. It 
tends to develop experts, but not full rounded men. It 
is almost totally defective in idealism. The theory of 
the new industrialism is that in industry the whole of 
life may be contained. The true workman loves his 
craft for its life quality, because the thing upon which 
he works is somehow a part of his own inner ideal. 
His work must be creative and in becoming creative it 
is also educative. If this theory of independent in- 
dustry seems to be in opposition to the machine and 
the trust, it will be seen that the machine, through be- 
coming more and more automatic — and a self-acting 



254 THE CHANGING ORDER 

machine is promised by physicists — and the corpora- 
tion, through greater and greater centralization, will 
bring about the release of innumerable agents now en- 
gaged in production and control, and permit their 
advance to a more intelligent private workmanship. 
The plea for a new education is necessarily linked with 
an argument for a new industrialism. 

The new industrialism embodies first of all as a fun- 
damental factor the principle of self-activity. So long 
as a man works for another, or after another's plans or 
designs, he is not self-directive and his work is not 
therefore educative. The individual is to be treated 
as integral, having his own talents to employ and his 
own faculties to exercise. Under conditions of free- 
dom industry changes its character and becomes 
aesthetic. Beauty is whatever is added to an object to 
make it expressive. In an object of utility it is the sign 
of the pleasure the maker takes in his own activities. 
It is the flowering of labor, the decoration of materials 
at the hand of a free workman. The new school brings 
art and labor into necessary association — labor to give 
substance, art to yield pleasure. 

The same principle of self-activity provides for the 
inherency of the design. The separation between the 
designer and his mechanical or human tool is detri- 
mental to both the designer and the workman. This 
form of specialization implies that a brain is not motor 
and that hands are not intelligent. With proper care 
during the first stages of education the hand and the 
brain become co-ordinated and the best brain coin- 
cides with the best hands. When working in separa- 
tion the brain tends to refine and to weaken its tissues, 



A SCHOOL OP INDUSTRIAL ART 255 

and the hand to coarsen and become mechanical. After 
centuries of such divorce the fine arts on the one hand 
have become too refined for industrial use, and indus- 
try on the other hand is too coarse for the artist. The 
breach between the castes is not closed when the artist 
condescends to design for the workman : the division 
ought not to exist. It would be the function of the new 
school to create a class of craftsmen who would have 
ideas to communicate and perfect rhetorical skill for 
their expression. 

To associate art and industry : to change the charac- 
ter of labor so as to make industry educative, and to 
develop the instinct of workmanship and elicit the 
pleasure belonging to good workmanship so as to 
make the industrial life complete — such may be said 
to be the aims of industrial education. 



II. 



The aim of the school is suggestive of its proper 
designation. The term Manual-Training has come 
into popular use as descriptive of institutes or depart- 
ments of schools that seek to educate the hand. The 
objection to the title is that, having arisen at a time 
when the caste divisions between the hand and brain 
were in force, it represents the opposition between 
manual training and mental training, whereas the new 
education is not primarily manual and afterwards 
mental, but wholly integral. Trade School and Indus- 
trial Institute seem to emphasize too much the me- 
chanical and professional aspects. The term Arts 



256 THE CHANGING ORDER 

and Crafts is advocated as representing the fusion of 
mental and manual education, but while descriptive, 
the term is awkward. I have chosen as an equally 
significant and more dignified appellation, the caption : 
Industrial Art. 



III. 



The location of a School of Industrial Art is a most 
important matter for reflection. It should be in the 
environs of a large industrial city, not so far from the 
city as to obscure the commercial and social bearing 
of industry, and not so far from nature as to lose the 
suggestiveness of natural forms and growths. Fields, 
streams, and woods should be accessible. It would be 
necessary to maintain a garden for the propagation of 
plants for scientific and industrial purposes. In order 
that the local flora and fauna may provide the basic 
motive for design it is essential that with these forms 
there should be intimate and loving association. Na- 
ture alone initiates. If either factor is to be ignored it 
should be the city rather than the country that should 
be abandoned. 



IV. 



The building should be substantial but need not be 
conspicuous or in any way extravagant. The tendency 
of the leisure classes is to uphold their reputability by 
vain expense and useless display. Let an industrial 



A SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ART 257 

school be at least sincere. The architecture should be 
native, its styles suggested by the buildings' use, its 
symbols indicative of the social environment. All 
evolution of structure represents, of course, growth 
out of the past ; but it is more necessary in the case of 
an industrial school to create types for future use, 
however simple, than to employ the mature and com- 
plex modes of past stages of civilization. However, 
if an historic style should be preferred, study may be 
given to the Gothic of the thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries, when the prophecy of a people's art was first ut- 
tered, when there was the most complete co-operation 
between artist and workman. But happy the architect 
who can take his stand among the people of his own 
time, realize the significance of the modern forces, and 
create symbols and styles for democracy. The build- 
ings should be of such a size and character as to pro- 
vide class-rooms, laboratories, a museum, a library, 
and other features dependent upon the scope of the 
school. 



V. 



Instruction would proceed upon the belief that in 
the work of the nature I have described, and in the 
knowledge attendant upon such work, the integral per- 
sonality may be contained, and from work and the 
knowledge necessary to make work intelligent the 
fullest democratic culture is to be achieved. A few 
principles will govern the emphasis of instruction. 
The aim of the school being to employ the creative 



258 THE CHANGING ORDER 

energies, the work-shops become the central feature. 
From the work-shops all other interests radiate; back 
to them the results of laboratories and class-rooms re- 
turn. As a plan, an ideal, is the initial stage of any 
work, especial attention should be given to the study 
of design — not design in the abstract so much as de- 
sign in relation to given materials and usage. From 
general culture and science those studies will be se- 
lected which are best calculated to equip a workman 
with ideas and to render his work intelligent. These 
principles lead to a threefold division of the work of 
the school, according as design, construction, or in- 
struction receives the emphasis. In the drawing- 
rooms training would be given in free-hand, mechani- 
cal and architectural drawing, representation of nature 
and the human figure, clay-modeling, composition, 
color and decoration. In the work-shops, equipped 
with hand and power tools, furnaces, dyevats, presses 
and other necessary appliances, would develop all the 
constructive processes in wood, metal, leather, stone, 
glass, the earths, paper and textiles. Adjacent to the 
designing rooms and work-shops would be chemical 
and biological laboratories and the general experimen- 
tal rooms. In the class-rooms would proceed instruc- 
tion in geography, history, psychology, the English 
language, rhetoric and general literature. In tabu- 
lated form the work of the school would appear accord- 
ing to the following scheme: 

(1) Drawing 
I. Department of Design ^ (2) Clay Modeling 

( 3 ) Composition 



A SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL ART 



259 



II. The Work Shops 



(1) Decoration 

(2) Printing and Book 

Binding. 
Construction in 

(3) Wood 

(4) Metal 

(5) Leather 

(6) Paper 

(7) Stone 

(8) Glass 

(9) The Earths 
(10) Textiles 



A. The History Group 



B. The Philosophy Group 



C. The Mathematical Group 



D. The Art Group 



E. The Science Group 



III. Department of Science and Art 

1) History 

[2) Political Science 
-s (3) Sociology 
[ 4 ) Economy 
1) Psychology 
;2) Ethics 

1) Numbers 

2) Geometry 

1) English Language 

2) Rhetoric 

3) Music 

4) Literature 
1 ) Geography 

[ 2 ) Physics 

i (3) Chemistry 

(4) Biology 

It is understood that the work of any pupil is to 
be co-ordinated as fully as possible. While a general 
course, say of chemistry, may be undertaken, yet the 
chief function of chemistry in the school would be to 
assist those engaged in work involving a knowledge of 
chemistry for its prosecution. Printing would be as- 



260 THE CHANGING ORDER 

sociated with composition, free-hand lettering and 
page decoration, illustration, the related processes of 
paper making and bookbinding, and the general his- 
tory of language and of human culture. The history, 
philosophy and art groups that have reference to more 
general ideals would be more universally prescribed. 
Of the cultural subjects geography and the history 
group which disclose the development of the earth as 
the home of the human race and the evolution of man 
in his industrial, economic and artistic aspects, are the 
most important. Free-hand drawing in various color 
media, modeling in clay, composition, music, language 
and rhetoric are fundamental courses in the art of ex- 
pression. Training in music might be given to all in 
daily assembly. Architectural and mechanical draw- 
ing are subservient to special needs. The processes of 
the work-shop all relate to objects of social utility, 
and while primarily educative of personality, aim to 
prepare pupils for professionalism in the different 
crafts. No provision is made in this plan for the study 
of language other than English, all other literatures 
being used in translation. Physical culture as an in- 
dependent object is rendered unnecessary by reason 
of the absorbtion of physical energy in the work-shops, 
though opportunity should be given for the recreation of 
outdoor sports. 

This scheme contemplates the complete harmoniza- 
tion of all the incidents of education in line with the 
general democratic import of the school: the centrali- 
zation of administration, but fully co-operative instruc- 
tion; the individual treatment of pupils according to 
capacity and intention; free education, under counsel, 



A SCHOOL OP INDUSTRIAL ART 261 

both as to choice of work and the time employed; the 
co-ordination of courses; a continuous session of the 
school without special assemblage or ceremonials; the 
giving of certificates of proficiency (but not degrees) ; 
the encouragement of independent organizations 
among the pupils; and instruction above all else in 
self-control. 

Such a school may be wholly autonomous, itself a 
free creative activity, its initiation extending even to 
the writing and printing of its text-books and the in- 
vention and manufacture of its tools and equipment. 
It would organize research into fields that are today 
almost untouched by trained explorers — the field of 
industrial physics and industrial chemistry. A lab- 
oratory devoted to the problem of the industrial appli- 
cation of energy might become a factor in racial prog- 
ress. The school might hope to become a training 
place for inventors. 



THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS 
GROUND: WALT WHITMAN. 

I. 

The religious system of Christendom, in almost 
the entire range of its theologic and ethical concep- 
tions, is patriarchal, monarchical, or feudal in origin 
and character. In the terms "Our Lord" and "Our 
Father" the whole occidental idea of divinity is con- 
tained. The Kingdom of Heaven was modeled upon 
the kingdoms known to men at the time when the 
idea was first conceived; only in the place of a weak, 
corrupt and defective king, there was substituted a 
perfect Being whose word was absolute Truth and 
whose acts constituted absolute Justice. Around the 
"Emperor of Heaven" — to use Dante's phrase — vice- 
gerents of lesser realms were thought to subsist, de- 
clining in authority, rank by rank, to the lowest 
priest in the earthly hierarchy, each dispensing truth 
and justice as deputized by the rulers higher in the 
scale. Over a realm of "chaos and old night" Satan 
and his myrmidons ruled in identical manner. The 
philosophic ground of this system is known as dual- 
ism. 

Towards their various rulers mortals held the re- 
lation of vassals. The whole theory of duty, obliga- 
tion, punishment, and salvation, the very attitude men 
assumed in supplication, was feudal in character. The 



THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 263 

very term Lord, employed to describe one person of 
the triune throne, is indicative of the feudal conception 
in the whole warp and woof of western theology. In 
early English the apostles were designated also 
as thegns, the title for the lesser nobility or kingly 
servitors. The ethical codes, corresponding to the 
monarchical theology, such as describe the relations of 
men to their rulers or to their compeers, were mili- 
tary in effect. "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not" 
represent the ways of kings to their servants. A sys- 
tem of rites and ceremonials was further invented by 
the priests to express the relation of lord and vassal. 
"Order" — to use Pope's word, meaning gradation or 
rank — being "Heaven's first law," a proper series of 
deadly and venial sins and their corresponding vir- 
tues was constructed, and up the painful path the sub- 
jects of the King were enjoined to labor, if so they 
might enter the heavenly kingdom and glorify God 
forever. 

From this point of view distinctions were drawn 
between the natural and the spiritual. In so far as 
man was related by bodily birth and inheritance to 
the order of Nature, he was of necessity base, corrupt- 
ible, sinful, and in need of redemption; in so far as 
he was spiritual, his soul tended toward the good. 
Here were the elements mingled for an unending war- 
fare. For its help the soul had the sword of the spirit, 
the breastplate of faith, the helmet of salvation, the 
whole armor of righteousness. 

God, the Divine Ruler of the Universe; Man, the 
vassal under surveillance; Nature, the arena of con- 
flict: such are the three general terms of Christian 



264 THE CHANGING ORDER 

theology formulated by the church fathers, subscribed 
to by Dante and Milton, and current today in every na- 
tion of the Occident. Even in America, the organized 
churches and denominations, Catholic and Protestant, sub- 
sist upon the feudal traditions. Our National Hymn 
concludes with an appeal to "Great God, our King." 
Indeed it is not too much to say that if the notion of 
king and subject, of judge and convict, were discarded, 
if the dualistic distinctions relating to good and evil 
were dismissed, if the gulf between man and nature 
were closed, almost the whole content of orthodox theol- 
ogy would be dissipated in a twinkling — and yet the 
whole of modern life would remain. The creeds, the 
homilies, the books of prayer, the codes of conduct 
bequeathed the churches by past centuries, offend the 
scientific and self-dependent mind. The future belongs 
to the new tendencies. Either the churches must recon- 
struct their systems in terms of democracy, vitalize their 
theology by renewal at the founts of modern life, or 
simply decline in influence till they become mere anti- 
quarian symbols, reminiscent of ancient peoples and old 
beliefs. Said Emerson: "We too must write Bibles to 
unite again the heavenly and the earthly world." 



II. 



I turn for illustration of what may be done in formulat- 
ing a new and modernized theology to Whitman's 
"Leaves of Grass," the one book of considerable impor- 
tance known to me that breaks utterly with feudal forms 
and assumes the processes of democracy, and that is at 



THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 265 

the same time intentionally religious in basic purpose. 
"I will see," Whitman said to himself, "whether there is 
not, for my purposes as poet, a religion, and a sound 
religious germinancy in the average human race, and in 
the hardy common fibre and native yearnings and ele- 
ments, deeper and larger, and affording more profitable 
returns, than all mere sects or churches — as boundless, 
joyous, and vital as Nature itself — a germinancy that 
has been too long unencouraged, unsung, almost un- 
known. The time has certainly come to begin to dis- 
charge the idea of religion from mere ecclesiasticism, 
and from Sundays and churches and church-going, and 
assign it to that general position, chiefest, most indis- 
pensible, most exhilarating, to which the others are to be 
adjusted, inside of all human character, and education, 
and affairs. The people, especially the young men and 
women of America, must begin to learn that religion is 
something far, far different from what they supposed. 
It is indeed, too important to the power and perpetuity 
of the New World to be consigned any longer to the 
churches, old or new, Catholic or Protestant — Saint this, 
or Saint that. It must be consigned thenceforth to dem- 
ocracy en masse, and to literature. ,, 

More than any other thinker of his generation Whit- 
man realized the need of creating new religious ideals 
for America, new "mind formulas" as real and large and 
sane as the continent itself, and while acknowledging to 
the full the indebtedness of America to "venerable priestly 
Asia" and "royal feudal Europe" he accepted the oppor- 
tunity of a new world and a new time to plant the seeds 
of a new gospel. "I too, following many and followed 
by many, inaugurate a new religion." It was not his 



266 THE CHANGING ORDER 

purpose, however, to organize another religious sect, 
but, acting as a poet and not as a priest, to arouse the 
religious consciousness in men and women so they might 
be religious in themselves and write Bibles and creeds 
at the height of their enlightenment. Of himself he 
said: "I know I have the best of time and space, and 
was never measured and never will be measured." And 
to those who would become his followers he gave warn- 
ing: 

"I tramp a perpetual journey, 
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut 

from the woods, 
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair, 
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy, 
I lead no man to a dinner -table, library, exchange, 
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll, 
My left hand hooking you round the waist, 
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the 

public road, 
Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, 
You must travel it for yourself." 

The capacity of any individual to write passages of 
experience for inclusion in the Bible of the race is 
claimed on the ground of the essential centrality of 
thought in the universe. Whitman is the author of a new 
anthropomorphism. Wherever anyone stands there is 
the center of all days and all races, the past summed up, 
the future foretold, all antecedents tallied, all laws real- 
ized, all objects encompassed. Bibles and religions pro- 
ceed out of the heart of man and the issues of life as 
leaves from the trees and as the trees spring from the ever 
pregnant soil. 

The philosophic ground of Whitman's work is modern- 



THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 267 

ly known as monism, or the conception of the unitary- 
nature of the universe. This is not to say, as promised 
by metaphysics, that the universe is resolved into any 
single property, as mind or motion, from which every- 
thing else is derived, but that the universe is one universe, 
organized into one system. Whitman is the first great 
prophet of cosmic democracy. In the circle of life not 
one thing is alien, not one disenfranchised, not one 
thrust out and doomed to failure. A vast similitude in- 
terlocks all. His great words are unity, fusion, envelop, 
enclose, ensemble, encompass, identity — the "flowing 
eternal identity" — evolution, and immortality. He is the 
"true poet" of his own song, the "full-grown poet," who 
takes nature by one hand and the soul of man by the 
other and stands between the two as blender, reconciler, 
and lover. The entire volume of "Leaves of Grass" 
is dedicated to the cause of unity — unity in oneself, 
unity with others in love and comradeship, unity of states 
in nationalism, unity of mankind in a spiritual identifica- 
tion. In separate poems he showed his own identity with 
the sun-set breeze, with the husky-haughty sea, accepted 
his relations with animals, and claimed all men and 
women as his lovers and comrades. Almost his most 
passionate poems relate to his love of nature's elements. 

"I am lie that walks with the tender and growing night, 
I call to the earth and sea half -held by the night. 
Press close bare-bosom'd night — press close magnetic nourish- 
ing night! 
Night of south winds — night of the large few stars! 
Still nodding night — mad naked summer night. 

Smile, voluptuous cool-breath'd earth! 
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! 



268 THE CHANGING ORDER 

Earth of departed sunset — earth of the mountains misty-topt! 
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with 

blue! 
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! 
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for 

my sake! 
Far-swooping elbow'd earth — rich apple-blossom'd earth! 
Smile, for your lover comes. 

Prodigal, you have given me love — therefore I to you give love ! 

unspeakable passionate love. 

You sea ! I resign myself to you also — I guess what you mean. 

1 behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers, 
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me, 

We must have a turn together, I undress, hurry me out of 

sight of the land, 
Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse, 
Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you. 

Sea of stretch'd ground-swells, 

Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths, 

Sea of the brine of life and of unshovelPd yet always ready 

graves, 
Howler and scooper of storms, capricious and dainty sea, 
I am integral with you, I too am of one phase and of all 

phases. 
I am he attesting sympathy." 

On its passional and devotional side Whitman's religion 
may be said to be constituted by cosmic enthusiasm. 

Comprehensive as is the scope of Whitman's thought, 
familiar as is his usage of the terms God and Nature, his 
doctrine of divinity is primarily a doctrine of Man. After 
all is said of the cosmos that can be said in celebration he 
returns to the center, to the one "chained in the adamant 
of Time" from whom the celebration proceeds, and de- 
clares: "You are not thrown to the winds, you gather 



THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 269 

certainly and safely around yourself, yourself! yourself! 
yourself, forever and ever!" "The whole theory of the 
universe," he affirms, "is directed unerringly to one sin- 
gle individual." It is not the sky, the night, the sea, that 
is great : it is the individual man that is great. "Dazzling 
and tremendous, how quick the sun-rise would kill me, 
if I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me." 
For the individual "the divine ship sails the divine sea" ; 
for him "the earth is solid and liquid" ; for him "the sun 
and moon stand in the sky." It is constantly iterated that 
"nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is." 
"I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner 
than I sing the songs of the glory of you." "I only am 
he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, 
beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself." 

"What do you suppose creation is? 
What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free 

and own no superior? 
What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred 

ways, but that man or woman is as good as God? 
And that there is no God any more divine than yourself? 
And that is what the oldest and the newest myths finally 

mean?" 

With sublime rebellion against the ideal of master and 
lord Whitman announced the import of the democratic 
man: 

"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary 
lines, 

Going where I list, my own master total and absolute." 

He values the "beauty of independence, departure, ac- 
tions that rely on themselves." He praises the "bound- 
less impatience of restraint" he had observed among the 



270 THE CHANGING ORDER 

American soldiery. No joy is greater to him than the 
joy of a "manly self-hood." 

"O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave, 
To meet life as a powerful conqueror, 

No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms, 
To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, 

proving my interior soul impregnable, 
And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me." 

A radical foundation of the new religion is the divine 
pride of man in himself. 

[The supremacy of man in the universe is due to the es- 
sential creativity of thought. In an idealistic sense the 
universe is created and upheld by thought. No thinker 
can by any possible means escape from himself. Space 
and time and all other categories whereby the universe 
is known are methods of thinking. The universe, in 
short, as humanly known, is thought thinking itself. 
Within the same circle conceptions of deity occur, which 
are commonly the highest and most universal ideals the 
mind can form in respect of its own evolution. "Man is, 
and always has been," John Burroughs declares, "a maker 
of gods. It has been the most serious and significant 
occupation of his sojourn in the world." When an 
ideal of the highest good ceases to serve the end for 
which it was created, the mind sadly and painfully de- 
stroys it and erects a higher good to be held in honor in 
place of the fallen idol. Prometheus willed that Jupiter 
should control his being : when the god became tyrannous 
when laws, customs and decrees hardened and became 
stereotyped, the same will pronounced the god's eviction. 
All along the pathway of thought are strewn these 
pathetic figures of idols discredited and discarded. The 



THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 271 

philosophic mind views the spectacle without regret. Says 
the wise Maeterlinck : "The hour when a lofty conviction 
forsakes us should never be one of regret. If a belief 
we have clung to goes, or a spring snaps within us; if 
we at last dethrone the idea that so long has held sway, 
this is proof of utility, progress, of our marching steadily 
onwards, and making good use of all that lies to our 
hand." In "Leaves of Grass" the God-idea is once more 
corrected and modernized. What is "the greatest thing 
in the world?" The greatest minds answer that the 
greatest thing is Love. Love, when concretized in human 
life and absorbed in personality, produces the Lover, the 
Comrade, the One in whom all other lives and experiences 
are contained and brought together. To the perfection 
of Comradeship the whole universe tends. All forces 
have been steadily employed to complete the Great Com- 
panion. And the process is unending. "My rendezvous," 
says the poet, "is appointed, it is certain." 
"Reckoning ahead soul, when thou, the time achiev'd, 
The seas all cross'd, weather'd the capes, the voyage done, 
Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aims attain'd, 
As filFd with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother 

found, 
The Younger melts in fondness in his arms." 

In the illumination of this thought the past of human 
life is interpreted. 

"Having studied the new and antique, the Greek and Ger- 
manic systems, 
Kant having studied and stated, Fichte and Schelling and 

Hegel, 
Stated the lore of Plato, and Socrates greater than Plato, 
And greater than Socrates sought and stated, Christ divine 
having studied long, 



272 THE CHANGING ORDER 

I see reminiscent today those Greek and Germanic systems, 
See the philosophies all, Christian churches and tenets see, 
Yet underneath Socrates clearly see, and underneath Christ the 

divine I see, 
The dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend 

to friend, 
Of the well-married husband and wife, of children and parents, 
Of city for city and land for land." 

From the height of this vision the poet perceives the 
line of "compassionaters" — how they have labored to- 
gether to transmit the same charge and succession, how 
they enclose continents, castes and theologies, and how 
they will arise the whole earth over till times and eras 
are saturated and the men and women of races prove 
lovers and comrades. 

It is certain that in Comradeship the idea of Nature 
is also contained. The democratic man is to show 
affiliation with all phenomena. Of course nature may 
be known objectively by the intellectual categories of 
knowing: but the real knowledge of nature, the knowl- 
edge that Whitman had in view when he said: "I say 
the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for re- 
ligion's sake," is subjective, the consciousness of identity 
and kindred impulses among all created things. The 
poet confronts the shows of the day and night, acknowl- 
edges their copiousness, then absorbs their growths into 
himself. He stands and looks at animals and they display 
their relations with him and show tokens of himself in 
their possession. There is no smallest particle of nature 
beyond the reach of the soul. From the "rolling earth, ,, 
the "high-vibrating stars," the "mystical moist night- 
air," the "gorgeous clouds of sunset," the "scallop-edged 
waves of flood-tide," the sea's "husky-haughty lips," the 



THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 273 

"myriad leaves" of the Redwood-tree, "bravuras of birds," 
"bustle of growing wheat," "gossip of flame," "winged 
purposes of wood-drake" — from all natural sources with- 
out exception a kindred response vibrates back to the 
soul's invitation. The "damp of night" drives deeper into 
his soul than logic or sermons. A morning glory at his 
window teaches more than the metaphysics of books. 
"Why are there trees I never walk under but large and 
melodious thoughts descend upon me." He needs but 
to "lie abstracted" to hear "beautiful tales of things and 
reasons of things." 

"Air, soil, water, fire — these are words. 
I myself am a word with them — qualities interpenetrate with 

them — my name is nothing to them, 
Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what 

would air, soil, water, fire, know of my name? 
A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are 

words, sayings, meanings, 
The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and 

women, are sayings and meanings also. 

The workmanship of souls is by those inaudible words of the 

earth, 
The masters know the earth's words and use them more than 

audible words." 

"I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate 

those of the earth, 
There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate 

the theory of the earth, 
No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account, 

unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth, 
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of 

the earth." 

Manifestly the intention of all his songs of nature is to 



274 THE CHANGING ORDER 

demonstrate the infinite relationships within the universe 
and the value to the soul of man of the intercommunica- 
tion. 

Whitman's celebration of the individual culminates in 
his songs of evolution and immortality. His poems con- 
tain the strongest assertion and argument respecting the 
continuity of being that can be found anywhere in litera- 
ture. 

"I know I am solid and sound, 
I know I am deathless, 
I know I am august, 

My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite, 
I laugh at what you call dissolution, 
And I know the amplitude of time." 

So necessary is the conception of evolution to the 
philosophy of democracy, it would seem that if the soul 
of man had not already known its immortality, Whitman, 
as the spokesman of the New World, must have invented 
the idea for the furtherance of his theory of man. For 
by the thought of physical and spiritual evolution every 
atom in the universe is given place and importance and 
its place and condition are fully justified. In the cosmic 
elemental stream all conditions are levelled and made 
as one, however distinctive the special attainments of 
anyone may be. Size is only development. 

"Have you outstripped the rest? Are you the President? 
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there everyone, and 
still pass on." 

"Births have brought us richness and variety, 
And other births will bring us richness and variety. 
I do not call one greater and one smaller, 
That which fills its period and place is equal to any." 



THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 275 

"The universe is duly in order, everything is in its place, 
What has arrived is in its place and what waits shall be in 
its place." 
The universe is seen as a procession with measured and 
perfect motion. Shadows advance before the object and 
reached hands bring up the laggards. "Always the 
procreant urge of the world." 

"I saw the face of the most smear'd and slobbering idiot they 
had at the asylum, 
And I know for my consolation what they knew not, 
I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother, 
The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement, 
And I shall look again in a score or two of ages, 
And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharmM, 
every inch as good as myself." 

The poet meets death with equable mind. With "keys 
of softness" the soul loosens the "clasps of the knitted 
locks." Life and "Heavenly Death" provide for all. 
When any orb is enfolded, the spirit "lifts that level" 
and continues beyond. "The goal that was named cannot 
be countermanded." 

To such an inclusive spiritual democracy there can be 
no limitations or probations. Immortality is necessary 
and universal. 

"I swear I think there is nothing but immortality! 

That the exquisite scheme is for it, and the nebulous float is 
for it, and the cohering is for it! 

And all preparation is for it — and identity is for it — and 
life and materials are altogether for it!" 

Indeed "the smallest sprout shows there is really no 

death." 

"Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, 
No birth, identity, form — no object of the world, 
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing." 



276 THE CHANGING ORDER 

In a philosophy devoted to the identities the dualistic 
distinctions between good and evil fail of their meanings 
and the orthodox ethics is thrown to confusion. The 
doctrine of good and evil in the mediaeval theologies was 
comparatively simple; it consisted in forming fixed cate- 
gories of right and wrong by absolute standards. But 
as life was never static but ever flowing it was difficult 
even during the vogue of dualism to fit practice to the 
theory and it became easier to modify the theory than to 
enforce right conduct. Extremists like William Blake 
denied the sacred codes in toto and reversed their cate- 
gories. Milder men, like Emerson and Browning, at- 
tempting reconciliation, extended toward Satan a gener- 
ous hospitality and appropriated his evil as an agency 
in the good. Both thinkers abandoned the restrictive 
codes and trusted to the soul's original energy. It re- 
quires but one more step to reach the monistic plane and 
but a little more courage to give up the attempt at recon- 
ciliating differences that pertain only to a past philosophy 
and construe life on wholly new terms. Probably Whit- 
man in general would adopt the saying of Emerson : "Vir- 
tue is the adherence in action to the nature of things: 
The only right is what is after my constitution, the only 
wrong is what is against it." And if the retort be made : 
"These impulses may be from below," Whitman would 
respond as cheerfully as did the elder sage : "If I am the 
Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil; no law 
can be sacred to me but that of my nature." However 
Whitman is more inclined to deny the validity of the 
terms good and bad altogether and would use them — as 
Blake did in his "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" — only 
as traditional counters of speech, very much as one still 



THE PHILOSOPHIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUND 277 

speaks of the rising and setting of the sun. "I resist 
anything," he said, "more than my own diversity." "I 
will stand by my own nativity pious or impious so be it." 
"Clear and sweet is my soul and clear and sweet is all 
that is not my soul." Knowing the perfect fitness and 
equanimity of things he is vexed at "showing the best 
and dividing it from the worst." "Evil propels me and 
reform of evil propels me. I stand indifferent." "What 
is called good is perfect and what is called evil is just as 
perfect." In a poem that recalls Emerson's "Mithridates" 
he declares that in earth's orbic scheme "newts, crawl- 
ing things in slime and mud, poisons, the barren soil, 
the evil men, the slag and hideous rot" are all enclosed. 
Or in other words of his : "The roughness of the earth and 
of man encloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth 
and of man." He thinks the elementary laws do not need 
to be worked over and believes that from the unflagging 
pregnancy health will emerge. The problem of modern 
life is not as in mediaeval days to achieve righteousness 
but to entertain sincerity and truth. And in the last 
thought of the universe "all is truth." Everything, in- 
evitable and limitless, appears in the line of its inheri- 
tance and is allowed the "eternal purports of the earth." 

"I sing the endless finale's of things, 
I say Nature continues, glory continues, 
I praise with electric voice, 

For I do not see one imperfection in the universe, 
And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the 
universe." 

Thus the motive of Whitman's entire gospel is to es- 
tablish man in undisputed mastery over himself. The 
center of authority is shifted from what is without the 



278 THE CHANGING ORDER 

soul to the soul itself. The ethics of authority is for- 
ever void. Responsibility attaches to the self. And no 
one ever taught more insistently than Whitman the im- 
possibility of eluding "the law of promotion and trans- 
formation" that inheres in one's own acts and thoughts. 
Theft comes back to the thief as love returns to the 
lover. "A strong being is the proof of the race and of 
the ability of the universe." 

The intention of the old theology was to reduce man, 
to make him submissive, to take from his autonomy. The 
new proposes to exalt man, to deny mastery, to prove 
capacity for self-rule. The old convicted man of sin, 
initiated a division and conflict within the self, filled 
him with lamentations, postponed his rewards. The new 
knows but one compact indivisible impulse, permits man's 
original energy its joyful utterance, yields his pains and 
pleasures now. The old tended to develop in man a sense 
of alienism in the midst of all cosmic forms. The new 
seeks to place him in rapport with the universe, to arouse 
the abysmal passions whereby he becomes the lover of the 
cosmos, the interpreter of its occult meanings and an ac- 
complice in its ends. 



THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST. 

I. 

There are certain periods in history described as awak-* 
enings and new births, during which, after long quies- 
cence, the human spirit rouses itself from stupor, breaks 
the bonds of code and custom, and strikes out in new direc- 
tions, makes discoveries of new continents and skies, is cre- 
ative and expansive in unwonted fields, and attains thereby 
a new plane of consciousness. The sign of awakening is 
an unusual activity — an activity vague and unregulated at 
first, but with an ever-increasing definiteness of purpose. 
The expansion is commonly at once geographical, scien- 
tific, and theosophical. The accidents of history determine 
the direction of discovery and provide the particular ex- 
ternal materials for the spirit's use, but the whole move- 
ment accrues eventually to character and becomes per- 
manent in an enlarged racial consciousness. Egypt, India 
and Persia at some time passed through such spiritual 
epochs, but the awakening of the peoples of Europe in 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is known above all 
other similar events as the Renaissance. There was then 
a genuine new birth of the human spirit, an advance for 
two mystic centuries into a new condition of freedom, 
an elevation of mind and soul such as the race had ex- 
perienced before but once or twice in its history. The 
vague unrest of the Crusades was an early sign of gesta- 



280 THE CHANGING ORDER 

tion, of awakening energy. The new birth was announced 
by the revival of the sense of wonder and by the de- 
sire for exploration. Undiscovered lands and seas offered 
the opportunity of physical expansion. The unsolved 
problems of the stars excited the mind to explore the 
heavens. The accident of the fall of the Greek em- 
pire occasioned the migration of scholars westward; 
their absorption in the humanistic movement inaugurated 
by Petrarch and his followers increased the scope of the 
New Learning and led to a more complete resuscitation 
of the past. To the wisdom of the Jews were added the 
forgotten speculations of the Greeks. It happened that 
Virgil was the first of the classic texts to be printed, but 
Greek was the favorite symbol of scholarship ; Homer 
was printed in 1488; Aristotle in 1498, and Plato in 1513. 
The affiliation with the Greek spirit was the primary fact 
of the Italian renaissance. Through the retention of the 
germs of spiritual freedom contained in the literature 
of Hellas, the desire for knowledge was quickened, the 
sense of the beautiful was restored, and the horizons of 
speculation were widened through all the western lands. 
The immediate direction of energy, the materials upon 
which the new life was expended, were the accidents of 
the environment. That which was permanent was a cer- 
tain elevation of soul and freedom of spirit — a freedom 
that still gives a motive to the modern world. 

The nineteenth century will be known in history as the 
beginning of another European renaissance. An ex- 
pansive movement in human affairs became conspicuous 
about the middle of the century, the tide of which was felt 
upon the farthest shore. An old order was closed in 
Europe by the popular revolutions at the end of the 



THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 281 

eighteenth century. An impulse for freedom was initiated 
by the cries of fraternity and equality sounding from the 
French Revolution. The century witnessed the liberal 
movement in religion, the republican movement in poli- 
tics, the romantic movement in art, the scientific move- 
ment in education, the industrial movement in sociology. 
Geographical expansion has been effected through the 
exploration of the Dark Continent, the settlement of un- 
tilled lands in other continents and the conquest of in- 
ferior peoples by the dominant races. Natural forces 
hitherto unknown or unemployed have been discovered 
and applied to service. By means of improved micro- 
scopes and telescopes the minute and the distant have 
been brought within the ken of science. Philosophic spec- 
ulation has been more daring and far-reaching than be- 
fore. Never was man more active, more efficient, more 
like a god. All outward motion is a sign of inward 
growth. Outer expansion answers to inner expansion 
— even as conservatism and contraction of boundaries 
testify to inner decay. Man has awakened again spirit- 
ually. A cycle of growth is completed and new and 
more psychic paths are entered upon. Not now to Greece 
but to the Orient — to that which lay behind Greece, to 
that which tinctured the lore of Plato and the dialectics 
of Aristotle, to more primitive sources of life — the West- 
ern race is tending. The privilege that the nineteenth 
century enjoyed above all other centuries was its access 
to the East. 

II. 

The way to the Orient had been found as early as the 



282 THE CHANGING ORDER 

year 1500 by Portuguese sailors, and by the year 1600 
trade with India and China was inaugurated by English 
merchantmen. And still to the Orient all vessels are 
turning. That was a memorable historic event in 1853, 
when Commodore Perry with his "black ships" entered 
the harbor of Yedo to sue for a treaty of trade with 
Japan. Equally significant was the year 1869, when the 
Suez Canal was formally opened and the Union Pacific 
rails were laid across the American Continent. In 1885 
the Canadian Pacific Company completed its three thou- 
sand miles of highway to Port Moody, and another 
oceanic route to the East was established. In 1891 the 
Czarowitz drove the first spike for the Siberian railway 
at Vladivostok, on the Japan Sea. More recently the 
course of events established the United States in Hawaii 
and the Philippines on the route to the Orient. Other 
highways are being surveyed across Europe and Asia. 
Easy intercommunication is everywhere assured at the 
opening of the century. 

Trade and commerce with the East have been effected, 
not merely in goods and fabrics, but also in subtler prop- 
erties. In the ships of the tradesmen scholarship sailed. 
As in the earlier renaissance, scholastic criticism preceded 
the appropriation of spiritual results. What Petrarch, 
Marsigli, the eminent Chysolorus, and other Florentine 
scholars did for Hellenism, Sir William Jones, Schlegel, 
Bobb, Du Perron, Spiegel, Mueller, Whitney, Harper, 
and other noted scholars accomplished for the Oriental. 
While remembering the disclosures of science respecting 
the operations of nature, it is not too much to say that 
the chief conquests in the new learning in this age have 
been made in the field of human history. Whole acts in 



THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 283 

the drama of the world have been discovered. Treasures 
have been unearthed that surpass in human value the 
discoveries of all previous centuries. The entire sacred 
literature of the race is disclosed for the student of relig- 
ions. The veil is drawn from the mysteries of Egypt. 
India, the home of Brahmanism, the birthplace of Budd- 
hism, and the refuge of Zoroastrianism, is as an open 
book. Through the work of philologists we know some- 
thing of the history of words and conceptions, and of the 
momentous events, the intellectual battles, the life dramas, 
that words represent. 

It is astonishing to find how recently the Occident 
came into its inheritance of Oriental wisdom. The ignor- 
ance of Europe regarding the East was nearly total at 
the beginning of the nineteenth century. "I do not like 
the fashion of your garments," said King Lear in blind 
reproof of Edgar. "You will say they are Persian." A 
hundred years ago Persia was still hardly more than a 
name ; India, a vast outlying region ; Egypt, a sphinx 
hidden in the sands. The demand made by Voltaire for 
the substitution of the ancient moral systems for Chris- 
tianity was based upon the slightest knowledge of those 
systems. The Eastern poems of Moore, Southey, and 
Byron do not strike below the surface of their subjects. 
It was not until 1783, when Sir William Jones published 
a translation of the Indian poem "Sa Kuntala," that 
English scholars became even aware of the existence of 
an immense and complete Indian literature. The Upani- 
shads were accessible to European scholars only in a 
translation of a Persian version rendered into Latin by 
Auquetil du Perron in 1802. The celebrated Indian 
Rammahun Roy, who visited England in 183 1, was the 



284 THE CHANGING ORDER 

first Brahman to appear in Europe for the interchange 
of ideas. It was not till 1832 that a chair of Sanskrit was 
established in Oxford. Professor Wilson, the first in- 
cumbent of the office, translated only a part of the "Rig- 
Veda Sanhita." Professor Max Mueller published in 
1849 tne text and commentary of the "Rig- Veda." The 
oldest book of the Aryan race was then for the first time 
accessible to students. As with the Vedas of the Brah- 
mans, so with the Avesta of the Zoroastrians, the Pitaka 
of the Buddhists, the Kings of the Confucians, the Koran 
of the Mohammedans, and the Egyptian Book of the 
Dead. Until 1859 the language which the Parsees — the 
modern disciples of Zoroaster — used in their worship 
was an unknown tongue even to themselves. The Ro- 
setta stone was found in 1779, but waited long for Cham- 
pollion and Letronne to use it for unlocking the vast 
religious literature of Egypt. The researches of M. 
Edouard Neville and Flinders Petrie in Egypt are known 
to the youngest. The verses of Omar may fairly be 
classed in our current literature. It seems but yesterday 
that Lafcadio Hearn became a member of the college at 
Tokio and began the publication of those wonderful es- 
says that alone interpret the inner life of Japan to West- 
ern observers. It was left to Kipling to annex an en- 
tirely new field to literature. To the closing years of the 
century belong also the right reading of our own He- 
brew scriptures and the just recognition of the Oriental 
forces affecting the early Christian theology, and it 
seems not unlikely that the classics themselves will be 
reread in the light of the new learning. 

The activity of European scholarship is not without 
its spiritual ground. The search in the Orient is instinc- 



THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 285 

tive and intuitive. For fourteen centuries and more the 
Greek manuscripts lay in the Italian libraries unnoticed, 
waiting the development of an intelligence capable of 
interpreting them. It was not their discovery that caused 
the Renaissance ; it was the Renaissance that caused their 
discovery. Today some spiritual attraction, some feeling 
of kinship, is drawing the West to the East. It is too 
soon to measure the results of the influence ; it is hardly 
time to be predictive. This much may be understood: 
that the best will be absorbed. Schopenhauer, on read- 
ing the Upanishads, pronounced the Vedantic philosophy 
a product of the highest wisdom, and predicted that In- 
dian wisdom would flow back upon Europe and produce 
a thorough change in its knowing and thinking. In the 
first edition (1818) of his Welt als Wille und Vors- 
tellung he stated his belief that the influence of Sanskrit 
literature would not be less profound than the revival of 
the Greek in the fourteenth century. As is well known, 
Schopenhauer's own philosophy was strongly impreg- 
nated by the fundamental doctrines of the Upanishads. 
The Orient is the original home of theosophy, a term de- 
noting that form of philosophic thought which claims a 
special insight into the divine nature. It is safe to say 
that the whole transcendental movement, from its rise in 
Germany to its evaporation in the excesses of the "new- 
ness" in New England, was profoundly affected by the 
theosophical teachings of Eastern sages. One of the re- 
markable features of the New England "Dial," the or- 
gan of the new philosophy, was the chapters on "Ethnic 
Scriptures," which contained texts from the Veeshnu 
Sarma, the laws of Menu, Confucius, the Desatir, the 
Chinese "Four Books," Hermes Trismegistus, and Chal- 



286 THE CHANGING ORDER 

dean oracles. Modern theosophy was founded in the 
United States in 1875 by Madame Blavatsky and Colonel 
Olcott, the objects of the society being "to form a nu- 
cleus of universal brotherhood" and "to investigate the 
unexplained laws of nature and the physical powers of 
man." The extension of this and similar orders in 
America and Europe has been phenomenal. Antique 
oracular style, allegorical and esoteric methods appear 
again in the fables and apothegms of so modern and an- 
tagonistic philosopher as Nietzsche. The Oriental in- 
fluence will most certainly count on the side of idealism. 
It will tend to emotionalize the European intellect. It 
will quicken imagination. It will work for unity. It will 
effect brotherhood. 

Some of the practical effects of Orientalism may be 
determined by its modification of Western modes. The 
Greek influence on Italian art was in the direction of 
more perfect and elaborate form. Painting lost its de- 
scriptive and symbolical power and assumed the motive 
of pure form. By the time of the high Renaissance art 
forms had become fully abstracted from meaning, and 
in the next century in Italy art was so conventionalized 
that it failed to serve any human interest and the life- 
energy came to be exercised elsewhere. But theosophi- 
cal growth is inner: it depends upon experience and 
eventuates in character. Such beauty as it evolves will 
be characteristic, or that which corresponds to the inner 
thought. The outer form will tend to attenuate till it 
becomes the veriest symbol. The more mystical the feel- 
ing, the more vague and indefinite will be the form. The 
formlessness of Oriental literature has often been re- 
marked upon. Japanese art, while not particularly mys- 



THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 287 

tical, inclines to the characteristic. The music-dramas of 
Wagner well illustrate the new mode in the West. 
Beethoven was the last exponent of the music of classic 
form. Wagner through Schopenhauer became a convert 
to Orientalism and created a music of character depend- 
ent upon a philosophical system. Sounds exist not for 
themselves but for what they signify. The symbolistic 
manner is carried still farther in the plays of Maeterlinck, 
where outward action almost ceases, that the observer 
may follow the play of feeling and fancy with unimpeded 
motion. "The time will come," says Maeterlinck, "when 
our souls will know of each other without the inter- 
mediary of the senses." 

An exception to the general philosophic influence 
seems to be afforded by the writings of Omar, which are 
unidealistic and seek the ultimate peace in sensation: 
"A moment's halt — a momentary taste 
Of being from the well amid the waste — 
And lo ! the phantom caravan has reach'd 
The nothing is set out from — Oh, make haste!" 

But Omar was himself a rebel against the orthodox 
Puritanism of his time, and the explanation of the amaz- 
ing hold his rubaiyat have suddenly acquired upon the 
English race is their association with the same rebellious 
spirit in the West. Their acceptance betokens profound 
dissatisfaction with the current orthodoxies, and Omar 
in reality works indirectly for the spread of the idealism 
he opposed. The company of Omarians that meet in 
London in the midst of roses and over wine are simply 
agnostic; and if their contentment is not in thought, it 
is certainly not in sensation. 

Science and theosophy represent different phases of the 



288 THE CHANGING ORDER 

great awakening in the nineteenth century. The em- 
phasis is now on the outer and now on the inner. But 
it is wisdom and not knowledge that endures. The new 
cycle will witness the positive increase in the human race 
of thought, of experience, of character, of the life of the 
spirit. 



III. 



It is now possible to predict the affiliation of democ- 
racy with Orientalism. A casual observer would not fail 
to note the Pacific interests of America, the mainten- 
ance of the "open door" eastward for commerce, the in- 
terest of American scholars in Oriental subjects, the 
intervisitation of the teachers of all systems — the mis- 
sionary activity of the Churches in one direction and the 
successful propagandism of the new Vedantism in the 
other direction. It is recalled that at the foundation of 
the University of Chicago, the youngest of the univer- 
sities, the fullest provision was made for the oldest lan- 
guages ; that the first doctor's degree given by this uni- 
versity is held by a student from Japan for proficiency 
in the Semitic field ; that its first building for the use of 
a department of language was an Oriental hall ; and that 
its endowment provides for a series of lectures to be 
given annually in the cities of the East by Western 
scholars. And when one sees in America vast concourses 
of people wearing the garb and bearing the symbols of 
devotees to some "mystic shrine," he is impelled to won- 
der at the strength of migratory secrecies. There are 
these many outer signs of an inner identity. In certain 
emotional, imaginative, and reflective states, Americans 



THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 2SD 

are often farther from Europeans than from many 
Asiatics. Amid all our diversity, there is in America a 
profound sense of unity. To win independence first and 
then union, our two great wars were fought. The phi- 
losophy of individualism is our inheritance from Europe. 
To the Indian philosophy of oneness we turn for confir- 
mation of our principle of unity. The absorption of all 
in a common principle gives importance to the members 
of a group; it also provides for brotherhood. It is this 
consciousness of a common life direction that is bringing 
together again the various ethnic streams of the Aryan 
race, after a separation so long that the recollection of 
their common source has been completely lost. 

Three American writers illustrate different phases of 
the reunion. In the works of Bayard Taylor, Emerson, 
and Whitman, I find the affirmation of my thesis. 

Bayard Taylor was one of the first among American 
men of letters to be possessed with a passion for travel. 
He was an American Ulysses, "always roaming with a 
hungry heart." Other lines of Tennyson's poem spring 
to memory at the suggestion, and one is surprised to 
find how applicable the poem is to Taylor and all wander- 
ing men : 

"I cannot rest from travel; I will drink 
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd 
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those 
That loved me, and alone. . . . 

I am a part of all that I have met; 

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' 

Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades 

Forever and forever when I move." 

Beginning his wanderings in his youth, Taylor visited 



290 THE CHANGING ORDER 

in the course of his lifetime nearly every country of the 
globe. During a single journey, begun in 185 1, he trav- 
ersed most of the countries of Europe, Asia and Africa, 
traveling a distance of fifty thousand miles. He went 
with Commodore Perry to Japan in 1853. Keenly ob- 
servant, with insatiable curiosity, with a ready and re- 
liable pen, he was our best reporter abroad. But more 
than a mere observer and recorder, he had the genius of 
identifying himself with the life of many peoples. On 
the whole, he was the most conspicuous ethnic identity 
of the age. He seemed to be German, Spanish, Syrian, 
at need. Undoubtedly the most interesting and valuable 
part of Taylor's experiences abroad was his travel in 
India, China, and Japan. He felt himself drawn to these 
peoples as to no others. Not inappropriately Hicks, 
when commissioned to draw his portrait, painted him in 
Asiatic costume, turbaned, smoking, sitting cross-legged 
upon a roof-top of Damascus. E. C. Stedman, remark- 
upon Taylor's affinity with the East, noted the Oriental 
likeness "in those down-dropping eyelids which made his 
profile like Tennyson's ; in his aquiline nose, with the ex- 
pressive tremor of the nostrils as he spoke; in his thinly 
tufted chin, his close-curling hair; his love of spices, 
music, coffee, colors, and perfumes; his sensitiveness to 
outdoor influences, to the freshness of the morning, the 
bath, the elemental touch of air and water, and the life- 
giving sun." It was to be expected that his "Poems of 
the Orient" would give him freest outlet for song. Un- 
restrained, glowing with color, languorous, heavy with 
perfume, these lyrics not only represent Taylor's fresh- 
est, most vivid, and most spontaneous poetic work, but 
also are superior to anything of their kind in literature, 



THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 291 

being freed from the "honeyed monotony of Moore's 
Orientalism and the bookishness of Southey." They 
are indeed the "flowers of a life that had ripened in the 
suns of many lands." When the poet came to the "Land 
of the East," his soul seemed native: 

"All things to him were the visible forms 

Of early and precious dreams — 
Familiar visions that mocked his quest 

Beside the Western streams, 
Or gleamed in the gold of the clouds, unrolled 
In the sunset's dying beams." 

Flowers, too, shed their welcome; the birds claimed 
kinship. 

The Poet said: "I will here abide, 

In the Sun's unclouded door; 
Here are the wells of all delight 

On the lost Arcadian shore: 
Here is the light on sea and land, 

And the dream deceives no more." 

When the poet bade farewell to sun and palm, he was 
frank to make the following confession : 

"I found, among those Children of the Sun, 
The cipher of my nature — the release 
Of bafflled powers, which else had never won 
That free fulfillment, whose reward is peace." 

Taylor was attracted to the East because of its per- 
mission of free emotion and high imagination; Emerson 
was drawn thither that he might appropriate its deep 
speculative wisdom. Some would think to select Alcott 
rather than Emerson as an exponent of oracular wisdom ; 



292 THE CHANGING ORDER 

but Alcott was fed by the speculations of Greece and in- 
troduced no thought that is not in Pythagoras or Plato. 
Emerson was the sage, the seer. Brahmanism being a 
state of being rather than a creed, he may be said to 
have attained its highest condition. His very features 
recall the idea of Nirvana. Said an Indian visitor of 
Emerson : "There is that hushed, ineffable, self-contained 
calmness over his countenance so familiar to us who have 
studied the expression of Gotama's image in every pos- 
ture." In "Representative Men" Plato is described as 
visiting Asia and Egypt and imbibing the ideal of one 
deity in which all things are absorbed. From the same 
source Emerson drew much of his serene idealism. The 
Bhagavad Gita and other Upanishads, the writings of 
Saadi and Hafiz, were among his favorite reading. "He 
delights," said W. T. Harris, "in the all-absorbing unity 
of the Brahman, in the all-renouncing ethics of the Chi- 
nese and Persian, in the measureless images of the 
Arabian and Hindoo." Without dwelling upon all 
aspects of Emerson's Orientalism, it may be said that it 
was his mission to translate to Western readers the phi- 
losophy of unity. Above all men of his generation in 
America, he perceived the occult relationship between 
man and the universe. Matter, a Hindoo seer might ex- 
plain, is not a mere succession of appearances, nor yet a 
creation of the brain of man, but a mysterious marvelous 
putting forth in outward form of beauty that which is 
inwardly realized in the human soul. There is nowhere 
in literature so admirable an epitome of the Bhagavad 
Gita as the poem "Brahma" — that poem which was 
greeted with smiles and looks of amazement when it 
appeared in the first number of the Atlantic Monthly in 



THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 293 

1857, which is still not so well understood, forty and eight 
years after, as not to need quotation: 

"If the red slayer thinks he slays, 
Or if the slain think he is slain, 
They know not well the subtle ways 
I keep, and pass, and turn again. 

Far or forgot to me is near; 

Shadow and sunlight are the same; 
The vanished gods to me appear; 

And one to me are shame and fame. 

They reckon ill who leave me out; 

When me they fly I am the wings; 
I am the doubter and the doubt, 

And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. 

The strong gods pine for my abode, 

And pine in vain the sacred Seven; 
But thou, meek lover of the good, 

Find me, and turn thy back on heaven." 

Probably the poem still needs the commentary of a prose 
passage in "Representative Men," which summarizes so 
admirably the spirit of the Indian philosophy: 

"The Same, the Same : friend and foe are of one stuff ; 
the plowman, the plow, and the furrow are of one stuff; 
and the stuff is such, and so much, that the variations of 
form are unimportant. 'You are fit/ says the supreme 
Krishna to a sage, 'to apprehend that you are not dis- 
tinct from me. That which I am thou art, and that 
also is the world, with its gods and heroes and mankind. 
Men contemplate distinction, because they are stupefied 
with ignorance/ 'The words 7" and mine constitute 
ignorance. What is the great end of all, you shall now 



294 THE CHANGING ORDER 

learn from me. It is soul — one in all bodies ; as pervad- 
ing, uniform, perfect, pre-eminent over nature; exempt 
from birth, growth, and decay; omnipresent, made up 
of true knowledge, independent; unconnected with un- 
realities, with name, species, and the rest; in time past, 
present, and to come. The knowledge that this spirit, 
which is essentially one, is in one's own and in all other 
bodies is the wisdom of one who knows the unity of 
things. As one diffusive air, passing through the per- 
forations of a flute, is distinguished as the notes of a 
scale, so the nature of the Great Spirit is single, though 
its forms be manifold, arising from the consequence of 
acts. When the difference of the investing form, as that 
of god, or the rest, is destroyed, there is no distinction." 
The whole world is but a manifestation of Vishnu, who 
is identical with all things, and is to be regarded by the 
wise as not differing from, but as the same as themselves. 
I neither am going nor coming; nor is my dwelling in 
any one place ; nor art thou, thou ; nor are others, others ; 
nor am I, I.' As if he had said, 'All is for the soul, and 
the soul is Vishnu; and animals and stars are transient 
paintings ; and light is whitewash ; and durations are de- 
ceptive; and form is imprisonment; and heaven itself a 
decoy.' That which the soul seeks is resolution into 
being, above form, out of Tartarus, and out of heaven — 
liberation from nature." 

After such acknowledgment of the doctrine of unity, 
it is not surprising that Indian thinkers claim Emerson 
as of their own blood. From far Calcutta, Mazoomdar, 
a Brahman, wrote of Emerson: "He seems to us to 
have been a geographical mistake. He ought to have 
been born in India. Perhaps Hindoos were closer kins- 



THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 205 

men to him than his own nation, because every typical 
Hindoo is a child of nature. All our ancient religion is 
the utterance of the Infinite through nature's symbolism." 
But no! India is not so much a geographical region as 
a condition of being, a spirit, an attitude. India is here 
or nowhere. It is one of the romantic incidents of his- 
tory that the ancient sacred texts were recovered, even 
for their own peoples, through the agency of Western 
scholarship ; it may happen that the spiritual mantle of 
Elijah will fall upon some Western Elisha. 

Emerson was a home-stayer, but Whitman, like Taylor, 
was a traveler — a spiritual traveler, to be sure, but none 
the less did he know all lands, observe all facts, absorb 
all lives, contain all thoughts. He stands conspicuous 
among men for his enormous absorptive capacity. His 
was a "balanced soul," even as Emerson described Plato's 
to be, at home at once in the "phenomenal" and the 
"real." The East and the West are equally understood 
and included in his all-containing pages. 

"My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around 

the whole earth, 
I have look'd for equals and lovers, and found them ready for 

me in all lands; 
I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them." 

His Oriental attachments are unmistakable. His own 
countenance suggested being, rather than thinking. He 
spoke with peculiar pleasure of the primitive faiths. 

"My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths, 
Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between an- 
cient and modern, 
Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thou- 
sand years, 



296 THE CHANGING ORDER 

Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting 

the sun, 
Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with 

sticks in the circle of obis, 
Helping the lama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols, 
Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt 

and austere in the woods a gymnosophist, 
Drinking mead from the skull-cap, to Shastas and Vedas ad- 

mirant, minding the Koran, 
Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and 

knife, beating the serpent-skin drum, 
Accepting the Gospels, accepting Him that was crucified 

knowing assuredly that he is divine." 

And in his salutations to the world he did not forget the 
old empires of Persia, Assyria, India, or Egypt: 

"I hear the locusts in Syria as they strike the grain and grass 

with the showers of their terrible clouds. 
I hear the Coptic refrain toward sundown, pensively falling 

on the breast of the black venerable vast mother, the 

Nile. 
I hear the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque. 
I hear the cry of the Cossack, and the sailor's voice putting 

to sea at Okotsk. 
I hear the Hebrew reading his records and psalms. 
I hear the Hindoo teaching his favorite pupil the loves, wars, 

adages, transmitted safely to this day from poets who 

wrote three thousand years ago." 

In his vision appear plainly the Himalaya mountains, 
the waters of Hindustan, and the China Sea, "the spread 
of the Caspian," "the four great rivers of China," "the 
windings of the Volga, the Dnieper, the Oder," "the fall- 
ing of the Ganges over the high rim of Saukara," the 
steppes of Asia, the tumuli of Mongolia, the tents of 
Kalmucks and Baskirs, the highlands of Abyssinia, Afri- 
can and Asiatic towns, the "Turk smoking opium in 



THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 297 

Aleppo," the picturesque crowds at the fairs of Khiva 
and those of Herat/' "the caravans toiling onward," "the 
place of the idea of the Deity incarnated by avatars in 
human forms," "the spots of the successions of priests 
on the earth," the place of pyramids and obelisks, Japan, 
and all the islands of the sea. 

His thought also spans these vast distances. The 
speculations of India illumine his pages. It is remarkable 
that Vedantists and Parses grasp the significance of 
"Leaves of Grass" at first reading: they understand its 
principles of distinction and unity, its celebration of the 
Self, the deference of the "Me" to the "real Me," its con- 
tentment with being, its mystic pantheism, its doctrine 
of translations and avataras, its nature worship, its all- 
embracing symbolism. This gladness at birth, immense 
egotism, acceptance of evil, content at death, do not of- 
fend them as many Western readers — for their own 
philosophy teaches the necessity of many births and 
deaths, the importance of personality, the acceptance of 
such conditions as the soul selects in birth and life. "On 
the Beach at Night Alone" is as all-absorbing as any In- 
dian poem. "All Is Truth" is readily received by a mind 
that understands Emerson's "Brahma" and "Uriel." 

Yet what is remarkable about Whitman is not his 
translation of another literature but the attainment in 
his own personality of a given plane of being. His was 
an original wisdom, an intuitive comprehension of things. 
"I need no assurances ; I am a man preoccupied of his 
own soul." There is no reason, however, for belittling 
his knowledge or conscious motive in chanting the songs 
of the Orient. He was well aware of the course of events 
that was bringing the geographies together, and took 



298 THE CHANGING ORDER 

upon himself the task of furthering the tendency. In 
"Facing West from California's Shore" he knew full 
well the import of the circle : 

"Facing west from California's shores, 
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound, 
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, 

the land of migrations, look afar, 
Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled; 
For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of 

Kashmere, 
From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the 

hero, 
From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice 

islands, 
Long having wander'd since, round the earth having wander'd, 
Now I face home again, very pleas'd and joyous — 
(But where is what I started for so long ago? 
And why is it yet unfound?)" 

Two other poems set forth Whitman's understanding 
of the effects of the interaction of East and West: "A 
Broadway Pageant" and "Passage to India." In 1867 
certain envoys from Eastern peoples visited New York. 

"Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come, 
Courteous, the swart-cheek'd two-sworded envoys, 
Leaning back in their open barouches, bareheaded, impassive, 
Ride today through Manhattan." 

The pageant was for Whitman the occasion of a 
prophecy. He perceived in the "nobles of Niphon" the 
errand-bringers of the whole Orient. 

"The Originatress comes, 
The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of eld, 
Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion, 
Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments, 



THE OUTLOOK TO THE EAST 299 

With sunburned visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes, 
The race of Brahma comes. 

Lithe and silent the Hindoo appears, the Asiatic continent 

itself appears, the past, the dead, 
The murky night-morning of wonder and fable inscrutable, 
The envelop'd mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees, 
The north, the sweltering south, eastern Assyria, the Hebrews, 

the ancient of ancients, 
Vast desolated cities, the gliding present — all of these, and 

more, are in the pageant-procession." 

The coming of the envoys betokened the opening of 
the Eastern doors. The sleep of the ages had done its 
work. The first cycle of progress from the start in Para- 
dise was finished. From America, the "Libertad of the 
world," would spring a "greater supremacy :" Asia to be 
renewed for a second cycle through absorbing the ex- 
periences the race had gained in its journey westward. 

"Passage to India" reverses the prophecy. Its occa- 
sion was the opening of the Suez Canal and the comple- 
tion of the Pacific Railroad, by which the rondure of the 
world was at last accomplished. Passage to India meant 
passage to the "most populous, wealthiest of the earth's 
lands ;" it meant passage to "primal thought," "wisdom's 
birth," "innocent intuitions," passage to "flowing litera- 
tures," "tremendous epics," "budding bibles," passage to 
"old occult Brahma," and "the tender and junior 
Buddha." It meant passage to more than India, the solv- 
ing of "aged fierce enigmas," "mastership of strangling 
problems," the telling of the "secrets of the earth and 
sky." It meant the liberation of the soul, the explora- 
tion of "Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and 
Death." 



300 THE CHANGING ORDER 

"0 Thou transcendent, 

Nameless, the fiber and the breath, 

Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou center of 
them, 

Thou mightier center of the true, the good, the loving, 

Thou moral spiritual fountain — affection's source — thou reser- 
voir, 

Thou pulse — thou motive of the stars, suns, systems, 

That, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious, 

Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space, 

How should I think, how breathe a single breath, how speak, 
if, out of myself, 

I could not launch, to those, superior universes?" 

Taylor betrays the closeness of kinship between the 
West and the East in point of personal character and 
emotional and imaginative temperament. Emerson at- 
tained through natural evolution the condition of a Brah- 
man, and promulgated, with a conscious knowledge of 
its source, the Indian doctrine of unity. Whitman, test- 
ing the principle of unity, passed in compassion around 
the circle of the globe, perceived the cyclic currents of 
progress — that "the lords of life pass from east to west" 
— and predicted from the course of the sun the spiritual 
rejuvenescence of America through contact with Asiatic 
thought, and thence the spread and ultimate supremacy 
of the democratic principle. "In our own day," writes 
William Sloane Kennedy, "the great task is ended, and 
we now stand, with hand over eyes, gazing far over the 
blue Pacific to the ancestral home whence ages ago we 
set out." 



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